


Built on the Ashes

by leftofrevolution



Category: Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, an AU where Zod and Clark don't fight to the death, because Superman shouldn't start his career by killing someone, but that doesn't mean Zod is dealing well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-27
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-02-19 01:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2368736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftofrevolution/pseuds/leftofrevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Making a new life is difficult when all that came before is dust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Even while insensate, the noise of the alien world refused to retreat. It permeated his dreams, if dreams they were; his last conscious thoughts replaying themselves ceaselessly, but senselessly, overwhelmed by the shriek of metal as the rest of the ship's hull disintegrated around him. It had not been the crash that had driven him into unconsciousness. His mind had folded in on itself several seconds before impact, protecting itself as best it could after seeing no recourse that could possibly salvage the events transpiring before him. Jor-El was finally being proven to have been right all along, if too late to matter: there was nothing to be done.

The percussive force of slamming into the ground at several thousand kilometers per hour certainly did not help things, however. There was, as best could be determined, nothing that could harm him physically on this planet, but as demonstrated by his earlier introduction to its atmosphere and Faora's unfortunate encounter with a missile, sudden exposure to unexpected stimuli on this world was an effective weapon against Kryptonians unused to senses magnified a thousand-fold. And so consciousness was some time in returning. Which was fine.

There was nothing to return _to_.

It was the sound of breathing not his own which woke him, in the end. Too close, loud enough to make him flinch before he had even fully clawed his way to sensibility, and disconcerting enough as an overlay to his memories of the ship's destruction to give him a sense of wrongness that finally jolted him aware.

He opened his eyes. And immediately regretted it.

A knife through his skull would have been kinder. Or at least he would have felt it less, rays of light piercing through his pupils and passing straight on through into his brain. He turned onto his side, curling in on himself, pushing the heels of his hands—‘where are my gauntlets?’ asked a distant, less distracted corner of his mind—into his eye sockets, closing his eyes in an instinctive retreat. It did not help as much as it should have, as it was at this point he discovered he could see through his own eyelids and was getting a more detailed picture of his own palms' musculature and skeletal structure than he had been given since a broken wrist had brought him to the infirmary his third year at the military academy.

It had not been a pleasant experience then. It was even less so now.

He had almost forgotten about the breathing that had woken him until its source placed a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. Calm down.”

If he had not heard the voice once already on this planet without the protection of his helmet, it would have been near unrecognizable. The words seemingly spoken at the shell of his ear, vibrating through the entirety of his frame and taking far too long to fade. Kal-El.

He struck out clumsily, out of what he wished he could say was instinct but wasn't. He had been trained better than that. It was not even surprising that Jor-El's heretical get caught him by the wrist as easily as he had once caught the youngest of cadets' during close-combat form classes. “Calm. Down.” Even with the strange echoing that distorted all voices—all _sounds_ —on this planet, he could hear the edge of irritation, but even that was tempered by something he could not name.

So Kal-El had inherited his father's infinite patience as well as his sentimentality for lesser beings. Just one more thing to despise him for. “ _Damn you_.”

His own voice made him wince. Even ringing throughout his skull, he could tell it came out in an undignified rasp. Kal-El was not, however, similarly moved, and just sighed what was probably comparatively quietly, hauling him by his captured wrist from his fetal position on his side into an equally hunched sit.

For a moment, the two of them did not move, Kal-El balanced carefully in a crouch with his fingers kept wrapped around his enemy's left wrist, while he himself kept his free hand pressed against his right eye socket, knowing it to be futile. Like everything else he had attempted since he had first heard of Krypton's imminent destruction.

Damn Jor-El, as well. The man could not have been wrong just once, could he?

“They're all dead.”

He heard Kal-El shift, putting his weight more on the balls of his feet. It had not been a question, but Jor-El's son answered it as if it had been one. “They're back in the Phantom Zone.”

Zod took in, then let out a long breath. It took most of the will he had left to not let it rattle in his chest. So. His failure had been absolute then.

He had not been worthy of the loyalty he had been given. “The Phantom Zone is a vacuum.”

There was a pause. Under the sound of breathing, Zod could hear two strange rhythmic noises that took a moment to recognize as their heartbeats, pulsing just out of sync with each other. “Then yes. You're the only one I found. The wreckage of the scout ship you took was just far enough out that you weren't sucked into the black hole.”

Zod took in another long breath. Than another. The punch he threw after the third was better than his first pathetic attempt at attacking the last of the House of El, and the flare of annoyance in Kal-El was more noticeable, but it was difficult to get proper leverage for a blow while sitting down and it would not have surprised Zod if the tightening of his shoulders had indicated what he was about to do. Watching Kal-El catch the punch in the palm of his free hand with barely a wince and only slightly being pushed back on his heels, Zod felt more tired than anything as Kal-El twisted both of his arms behind his back and shoved him onto his stomach. He felt the prickle of grass on his cheek, which struck him as odd, if unimportant. Hadn't the scout ship crashed into a city? “Stop that.”

He should have been angry. He _was_ angry, but even with as little time as he devoted to introspection Zod could recognize that it was merely a poor papering over a welling wave of despair, a bulwark that stood no chance of stopping the realization of the enormity of his mistakes from crashing over him. “I am going to kill you.”

Even to his own ears it lacked conviction, and certainly to Kal-El's, for he snorted with more than a hint of derision. “I've absorbed the sun's rays here for decades. You've been exposed less than a couple of days, and I bet you can't even stand without falling over.”

The anger was a poor bulwark, perhaps, but what was left to Zod but to cling to it? “Then I'll kill everyone else on this pathetic planet.”

The grip on his wrists tightened, the knee in the small of his back pressed down just slightly harder, but Kal-El's voice was still frustratingly even as he replied, “Why? Your followers are dead, your world engine is destroyed. What possible benefit could you get from hurting more people?”

 _To hurt you. To make the one who made my life devoid of meaning feel at least a shadow of what I feel._ But even that felt as empty as he did. “If you don't kill me, I'll do it. I _swear_ it.”

It was this, of all things, that made the hands wrapped around his wrists tighten like a vice. “I _don't_ kill people, Zod, and like hell I'd let someone like _you_ be the one to push me into compromising my principles.”

At that, he had to laugh, though the sound did not originate from any place of mirth. “There is no gateway to the Phantom Zone left to banish me through. There is no prison on this planet which could hold me. Even if you hand me over to the denizens of this pathetic planet to kill me in your stead as a sop to your conscience, they have already thrown the best they have at us to no effect at all. How do you plan on stopping me, son of El, if not by killing me?”

There was another moment of silence, relatively speaking. The sound of wind came as if over a wide open space, whistling harshly in Zod's ears. The sun grew, if anything, brighter in the sky.

How strange, a world so verdant compared to Krypton that still dealt with invaders so severely, rejecting them even as it strengthened them.

Zod allowed himself a bitter smirk at the length of time that passed before Kal-El spoke again, but it did not last. “I spoke to my father, you know, on the scout ship. His AI. He mentioned you as a defender of Krypton, willing to do anything to guard its people. But not as a senseless murderer. Not as someone so selfish that he would cause others pain just to make someone else put a stop to his own.

“There are _billions_ of innocent people on this planet who have done _nothing_ to you. Even the soldiers who fought you were only doing _exactly_ what you would have done in their place.

“And my father sent me here to protect these people. To inspire them. He saw something worth guiding in them. And if you had _any_ respect for my father, you won't touch a single one of them.”

Zod hissed through his teeth. If his breath hitched halfway through the exhale, Kal-El did not comment on it. Because Jor-El... Zod had disbelieved Jor-El before, and look what had come of it.

It was as if all the oxygen were pulled out of Zod's lungs at once, extinguishing his anger before it had a chance to properly kindle. Which left nothing but the ashes. “My purpose was to protect the people of Krypton. And I have failed. I have failed,” _because I am unworthy, because Krypton was doomed, doomed from the moment we withdrew from the stars, Jor-El was right he was right all along-_ “Because of _you_ , and there is nothing left of me. It would be a _kindness_ for you to kill me now. Better for me to have died with Krypton than to have to be subject to the _mercy_ ,” he spat the word as if it were an slur, and at the moment there was none greater, “of the heretic son of El.”

“Fortunately, I am not in any mood to show you kindness.” There was a note of humor in Kal-El's voice that Zod hated with the purity of having something uncomplicated to latch onto, that kept the tightening in his chest at bay. Seemingly convinced that Zod had at least been partially persuaded of the truth of his words and was not about to go on a rampage, he let go of Zod's wrists, took his knee out of the small of Zod's back, and stood up. Zod considered following suit, but at the moment it would have required expending an amount of energy he wasn't capable of mustering. “I'm going to go get us some food. I haven't eaten since your guys leveled Metropolis, and you've been out over a day, so if you're anything like me, you're starving.” There was the sound of Kal-El taking a few steps away as if to leave, but then, almost as an afterthought, he threw over his shoulder, “If you're going to kill yourself while I'm gone, I won't stop you. And I know you must hate me for working against you. But even though humans are my people too, I am still a Kryptonian, and I'm still here. And so are you. There's still something of Krypton to save, if you're just willing to adapt.

“I suggest you start by concentrating on something simple. That fir tree you're looking at, maybe.”

There was a sudden displacement of air that signaled Kal-El's departure. Zod considered turning his head to watch. He also considered biting through his own tongue so he could drown in his own blood (presuming he could still do either). In the end, he did neither, but did push himself to his knees, and finally focused his eyes. He had not even known there was a tree there. It stood alone, at least one hundred meters from the tree line at the base of the mountain below him that he also had not noticed, in what was otherwise a tundra of rocks, shrubs, and large swaths of tall grass like the one on which Kal-El had evidently placed him.

The wind grew loud again, the sun's light drilled through his retinas with a abruptness that almost made him yet again close his eyes. His vision somehow at once blurred and grew sharper. Why hadn't it been when... but he had been focusing on Kal-El's voice.

He had followed Kal-El's advice before, before entering the ancient scout ship. Had focused on the exterior of his hands until that was all he saw. And so he did again.

He stared at that tree which Kal-El had called a fir. Examined each of its strange, pointed leaves in turn. And breathed in the alien scent of the grass surrounding him. And did not let himself think of Faora, of all the soldiers he had given empty promises of a home and a future, because Kal-El had said he would return, and he would not let the son of Jor-El see any more of his failings than he already had.

\--*--

It was something less than an hour later that he heard Kal-El's approach on his position. In the interim, he had let his attention wander twice and gotten a piercing headache for his troubles. He found himself wondering—distantly, making sure not to take his focus off the tree—how Kal-El managed it. How long it had taken for it to become instinctive instead of this exhausting, conscious effort.

If Kal-El had any sense at all, he would not answer if Zod asked. Or he would lie, to keep him off balance. Though it was not as if he had exhibited much in the way of prudence before.

Zod did not bother turning to observe Kal-El's arrival, but he could still see in his peripheral vision that the Kal-El had thrown some of this planet's native garb over the ancient scout bodysuit of the House of El. If it were not for being momentarily startled by the change, he would have thought the bodysuit removed entirely, but for a second his perception shifted and he saw the loose garments for the camouflage they were.

Kal-El noticed his consideration and, after walking into his direct line of sight, raised the paper bag he was holding in his left hand. “I know it's the afternoon, but I felt like breakfast and IHOP is always open, so...” He shrugged, not finishing his somewhat incomprehensible thought, and started pulling boxes out of the bag, which now that Zod's attention had been drawn to them he could not help but smell. He did his best not to gag. As best he could determine, the boxes' contents was composed overwhelmingly of grease and some excessively sweet substance whose fragrance took up residence in his nose and promptly refused to leave.

When Kal-El reached out with one of the boxes and what seemed to be a flimsy cup with a lid as if he wanted Zod to take them, Zod could only stare at him. “This is insane.” If he did not know better, he would have thought that Kal-El had no comprehension of how close Zod had come to annihilating everything the boy had ever known. Of how many humans Zod's efforts _had_ killed, before Kal-El had succeeded in destroying the world engine and his allies had sent Zod's soldiers to the Phantom Zone. But as naive and foolish as Kal-El was, he was no simpleton. He knew. He _knew_. Even with his ridiculous code against killing, Kal-El should have been treating him like the captured enemy combatant that he was. Broken both his arms, perhaps, at the very least. He should not have brought him _food_ , should not have been prepared to eat next to him as if... as if they were anything but what they were.

At his words, Kal-El grinned—boyish, untroubled—and opened his mouth as if to say something flippant, but the smile quickly fell off his face when Zod's gaze did not shift. He sighed and sat cross-legged in the grass, putting the box and cup on the ground between them before pulling identical containers out of the box for himself. “Well, yeah. But eating something isn't going to make it _more_ crazy.” It was then that Kal-El's gaze hardened almost to what Zod would consider an appropriate amount of austerity. “And we need to talk, anyway. About how this is going to go.

“You can't hurt any more people.”

Zod waited, but all Kal-El did was open his box—the smell of grease and sugar grew even stronger—pull a blunt knife and a pronged utensil out of the bag, and start cutting what looked like some sort of flat bread into smaller pieces for several seconds before returning his focus to Zod expectantly.

There really was not much to say to that. “And?”

Kal-El must have caught the incredulity in his voice at the meagerness of what could only be charitably deemed the terms of his surrender, because some hitherto unseen tension drained out of his shoulders. He finished cutting up the flat bread and started poking the yellow fluffy substance next to it. “Well, that's about it, really. I talked to General Swanwick while you were out-”

“Who?” Faora—Zod jerked his train of thought off that path before it had a chance to go anywhere unwelcome—Faora had mentioned a Colonel Hardy in passing, but no general.

Kal-El's mouth quirked. “The leader of all the soldiers you fought. Anyway, once he got over the fact that I wasn't going to kill you, he talked to some other people up the chain of command, and since it was generally acknowledged that they'd have a hard time killing you without my help, they were more or less willing to treat what had happened as an act of war instead of a terrorist action. That's apparently important because it means that if you agree to stop killing people, they'll agree to an armistice. Under the table, since the official story is that all the alien hostiles are gone and they'd like to keep it that way, which would be pretty easy seeing as there are only two people besides me who know what you look like.

“Unless you have another ship you've been hiding, you can't just go to some other planet. But if you leave Earth's citizens alone, they'll leave you alone.

“So will you?”

Zod ignored the question. “They actually said that.”

Kal-El shrugged. “I'm pretty sure General Swanwick expects you to say no and force my hand into killing you. And yeah, they'd really love for you to be dead, or at the very least locked up, but I haven't found anything on this planet that can hurt me or hold me and told them as much, so they're really just going for the best-case scenario here. You being vulnerable to bright lights and loud noises isn't going to last forever, and that doesn't actually injure, it just hurts.

“So? How's it sound?”

It was not at all how Krypton had treated the few foolish races that had not fully understood the strength of Krypton's armed forces and attempted invasion, all of which had been dealt with brutally enough that there had not been any such efforts in Zod's lifetime.

But then, Krypton had been isolationist, but dominant in its sector of space. There had been no need for peace accords or negotiation. Krypton had never dealt with a situation like this, with a power which its military had no chance against, which could only be defeated by a lone, uncontrollable individual who refused to kill. In light of that, Earth's stance was very logical.

It was Kal-El himself who defied reason, for not killing Zod while he had been unconscious for what he had done to the planet Kal-El considered his own. And Zod himself was not feeling very reasonable at the moment. “And if I refuse?”

Kal-El's shoulders tightened again, and his mouth pursed into a thin line. “I don't know. But I _won't_ let you hurt any more people.”

This General Swanwick was correct, then; if Zod really wanted to, he could force Kal-El to kill him. Kal-El would hate it, that much was clear. He had not been raised as a soldier and did not have the bloodlines for it either. But as determined as he seemed to defend his adopted planet, he at least had his priorities in order that much, even if he did not know it yet himself.

For a long, bright moment, Zod was tempted. Despite Kal-El's previous proclamation, he was not truly Kryptonian. He was the product of heresy, an abomination reared by primitives. And though the Codex was literally sitting right in front of him, Zod was not a scientist. Even with the proper equipment, he could not have accessed it. His race—Krypton—was lost forever, and Zod could not breathe for the longing in his chest to let the despair that knowledge brought him swallow him whole.

But Kal-El's earlier words haunted him. That Jor-El, even if he had called Zod a monster in the end, had at least thought that Zod, however misguided, acted for the betterment of Krypton. And Zod himself had only managed to move forward, to push beyond his guilt for his murder of Jor-El, by reassuring himself as to the necessity, by making sure that every action he took from then on, no matter how violent or cruel, was for the greater good of their people.

Provoking Kal-El into killing him through further violence would be good for no one but himself. And he had done nothing to deserve the relief that death would bring.

He closed his eyes, willing himself to not see beyond them, for them to work as intended for once on this damned planet. He had no desire to watch the inevitable triumph arise on the son of Jor-El's face. “Fine. I will comply with your government's terms.”

Somehow, he could still feel Kal-El's smile. The fact that it was not mocking in the least somehow made it worse.


	2. Chapter 2

Zod did not, in the end, eat much of the food that Kal-El had brought him. Even though he was quite hungry, enough so at this point he was beginning to feel light-headed, watching Kal-El ruin perfectly good flat bread—what Kal-El called pancakes—by pouring an obscene amount of brown sweetening syrup over them had been disgusting enough. Realizing that the source of the greasy odor was actual meat was enough to put him off almost entirely.

The fact that he did not have as fine a control over his strength on this planet as he would have liked did not help, as his attempt at picking up the cup to examine the drink it contained ended with him crushing the cup into shreds of waxed paper, spilling the water within it all over his hand and onto the ground. Kal-El, wisely, had kept his amusement to a minimum. “Yeah... that's going to happen for a while until you've practiced. We went through a lot of dining ware while I was growing up.”

The pancakes had been less of a disaster after he realized the fragility of the eating utensils and just started (very gingerly) picking them up with his hands, but he had still been left with the distinct feeling that it would be some time before he stopped feeling like everything on this planet was made of spun glass. If he ever did.

Something less than half a day later, he stood on the site that had once sheltered the ancient scout ship and was now being reshaped into what Kal-El had decided to dub 'The Fortress' via liberal application of Kal-El's heat vision. Next to the site sat the remains of the scout ship and world engine—the only fragments of his people that had not been sucked into the Phantom Zone—which Kal-El had collected while Zod had been unconscious, either due to not trusting his adopted government to the extent of allowing them access to Kryptonian technology or simply because he felt he had the greater claim.

There was not much. No weapons, no diagnostic equipment. The original El power key for the scout ship had somehow survived, as had what Zod could best determine was its cloaking device and an exceedingly primitive matter replicator, which in of itself was a thing of antiquity considering their obscene power requirements had made Krypton stop producing them millennia ago. The genesis chamber had nothing that remained of it bigger than a fingernail. The world engine was little more than scrap. It turned out Kal-El had, unsurprisingly, been the one to divest him of his armor, as it was piled in a heap next to the cloaking device. Equally unsurprisingly, Kal-El had not found any of the hidden catches that made it possible to remove it and had, as best Zod could tell, ripped it off of him in pieces, which made it only slightly more wearable than the detritus of the world engine, which was to say not at all.

It was, all in all, a depressingly paltry representation of the technology Krypton had once brought to bear, though Kal-El looked pleased enough, especially when Zod had pointed out the cloaking device. “Do you think we could use the key to get the cloaking device and replicator up and running?”

Zod shook his head. “Not without a working power console. The key wasn't built to interface directly with the individual systems on the ship.” His headache was, at last, slowly receding; being able to focus consistently on one task, even on something as foreign to him as understanding the workings of a ship tens of thousands of years old, was helpful in more ways than Zod was willing to articulate, though that still did not mean the experience wasn't frustrating.

Kal-El pointed at one of the bigger remaining pieces of the world engine. “What about that? Could that work?”

Especially so when Kal-El started talking. Born of the greatest scientists of their age... with seemingly no intellectual acumen whatsoever. As good an argument against 'natural' birth as any Zod had ever heard. “That's half a power console. And from the world engine, which is a completely different field of technology from and a fraction of the age of the scout ship.”

Kal-El's face fell. “So no.”

“So I have no idea. I am no scientist.” He had, of course, undertaken the basic courses in repair required of all Kryptonians, but jury rigging a broken world engine power console to connect to the systems of a scout ship old enough to count as an historical artifact was vastly outside of his expertise. “We would probably destroy all of it in the attempt.” And blow up half the mountainside, considering the energy output possible from a power key, but that was less relevant in light of the fact that it was unlikely to do more than ruffle Kal-El's hair. Zod himself might be knocked out cold (again) without adequate warning to give him time to block out his senses, but that was rather less of a disaster than vaporizing what were possibly the last vestiges of Kryptonian technology and culture in the universe.

The thought of that clearly did nothing to deter Kal-El, who seemed to hear Zod's admission of ignorance on the matter as implication that his own theory was feasible. “If we never do anything with this stuff, there's no point to having gathered it at all. I say we try it.”

It wasn't a good idea. While the majority of the Kryptonian technology Zod had dealt with in the past few decades had either been scrounged from the abandoned colonies or heavily adapted from its original design, even the oldest of the colonial tech that had been worth taking had been no more than a millennium or two old, and the modifications made to the prison ship had been along understood lines and largely directed by Jax-Ur. This... this was a job for scientists, not a soldier and a refugee raised on a backwater.

Why was he even considering this? Why was he even standing here, watching the one who had cut down his civilization's last, desperate attempt at resurrection rummage through its leavings like a scavenger nosing at the bodies of the dead? While in front of him, Kal-El picked up the half-destroyed power console of the world engine, at his sides, Zod's hands involuntarily tightened into fists. He could be breaking Kal-El's neck right now. The fool wasn't even paying attention to him. He wouldn't even notice something was happening until he felt his vertebrae snap. All Zod would have to do was-

And then Kal-El turned, and his smile was Jor-El's. And Zod cursed himself for his weakness as he felt his fingers uncurl. “I think this could work! The other half of the console is here too, it just broke off.”

Zod nodded silently, trusting his voice at the moment even less than the rest of him.

What followed next was best not elaborated upon in too much detail. If it were not for the durability granted by Earth's atmosphere and its sun, both of them would have been electrocuted at least once, and Zod would have lost his right hand and half of his face. Just as an example. Kal-El did, in fact, end up with nothing but the charred remains of his oversized coat after twisting two wires together caused sparks that started a small fire. Two nights passed while they fumbled with circuitry unfamiliar to both of them, during which time Kal-El flew off twice more, ostensibly to get them more food and some basic tools but at least once to also communicate the situation to his allies as well. This stopped being a suspicion and became substantiated the second time Kal-El returned, as it was with a steel-encased pen and the treaty terms already signed by what appeared to be high-ranking military officials.

They spoke little apart from for the exchange of necessary information, except once late the first evening, which was also the first Zod spent conscious on the planet.

He was occupied with wrapping what Kal-El had called electrical tape around the two wires which had been the source of the fire when Kal-El said softly behind him, “Why Earth?” The question possessed the quick cadence of words which had been held back for some time only to slip out unexpectedly, which was a theory borne out when he turned to look at Kal-El and Kal-El's gaze flickered to the side for a moment, though it soon steadied as he looked Zod in the eye. “Why not just take the Codex, go to some uninhabited planet, and use the world engine there? No one would have had to die, and I wouldn't have needed to stop you.”

Zod felt his expression freeze. “Are you looking for me to justify myself?”

“I'm looking for a reason to believe that you're not insane. Or senselessly evil. I need to know I can trust you at your word.”

How very simple Kal-El's upbringing must have been, to think in such absolute terms. Zod let the corner of his mouth twitch up in a sneer. “It could be very well that by the standards by which you were raised, I am _both_.” Perhaps even by most Kryptonians' standards, not that Zod had understood the other castes' ethics any better. The blindness of the Council, the capitulation of the scientists to the Council's will despite the imminence of Krypton's destruction. The fact that the leader of the science caste's family symbol was _hope_ had struck Zod as ironic at the time, considering how easily Jor-El had accepted his fate.

It was only clear now, in retrospect, that Jor-El had not abandoned the virtues of his House entirely, as the House of El's last hope was standing right in front of him now, frowning with his arms loose at his sides, not willing to let the matter drop. “That's not an answer.”

And this time, it was Zod who wavered. He looked away. “We looked for thirty-three years and found eighteen former colonies of Krypton. For eleven of them, their former inhabitants had fled back to Krypton when support for the exploration program dried up. The other seven had withered and died. None of them were still habitable.

“In order for the world engine's terraforming efforts to succeed long term, it had to be on a planet already similar to Krypton; otherwise the terraforming was always incomplete due to dearth of resources to work with and reverted back at least in part over time unless it was constantly maintained by a world engine's efforts.

“This planet is the only one we ever found with the necessary prerequisites for a successful long term terraforming.” Zod knew there to be others; Jor-El had discovered this one after searching for less than year, after all. But Krypton's databases—and what few Kryptonians were trained in astronomy—had been lost with the planet, and those left had lacked the skills and information base to recreate Jor-El's efforts.

Zod had considered all of that upon their discovery of the world engine on the fifth colony. It was just largely irrelevant to the question that Kal-El was really asking. Zod returned his gaze to Kal-El's. “But don't mistake me. I would have extinguished a hundred civilizations if it would have brought back Krypton.”

Kal-El... did not look as disappointed as Zod had expected. “Would you do it now? Destroy a hundred civilizations?”

“If it would bring back Krypton?” It wasn't even worth a question. “ _Yes_.”

Kal-El shook his head. “Not if it would bring back Krypton. Just because.”

Zod had no idea where this was going. “What would be the point of that?”

At that, Kal-El actually grinned. “I have no idea.” And with nothing further than that, he dropped the line of inquiry entirely. “Could you pass me the tape?”

Zod did so without comment, but had some difficulty not feeling distracted for the rest of the evening.

A day and a half later, Kal-El pressed the key into its socket in the power console and the socket finally accepted it with a familiar hum. The lights indicating power to the cloaking device and matter replicator came on, and the air suddenly shuddered around them, refracting the light of the early morning.

Kal-El startled. “What-?”

“The cloaking device. It will need to be re-calibrated to a different shape if you want to use it to hide your base.”

Kal-El visibly relaxed, then nodded. “I figured. How long would-” His expression suddenly tightened, and he looked straight up. Abruptly, he said, “I... I've got to go.” He looked back at Zod, his face uncertain and... apologetic? Why would he- “I really do have to go for a while. I've been neglecting my... well, I've got stuff to do. The matter replicator does food, right? Will you be okay for a few days?”

Zod looked at Kal-El incredulously. Did he think him a child? “Even if it did not, I can go without for far longer than that.” Had been forced to do so, in fact, during some of their longer stretches between colony worlds. And even if Kal-El never did return, he could certainly swallow his nausea and kill some of the local fauna for sustenance. If he cared enough to.

Kal-El did not look entirely convinced, but did not inquire further and had soon departed to the south (as he always did). After making sure he was out of sight (which took some time even when considering the speed at which Kal-El flew; his senses now seemed to work at greater range as well as having gained acuity), Zod let himself slide to the ground, his back against the left edge of one of the cave entrances Kal-El had created, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his right hand while his left clenched in the dirt. He felt exhausted, which he supposed made sense when he took into consideration that he actually had not slept—really slept, not just been knocked unconscious—since they had arrived in Earth's orbit... was it truly eight days ago? Was it truly as little as eight days ago. Had it truly only been four days since Faora, Tor-An, Car-Vex, and the twenty-nine other soldiers who had made up his personal staff—the ones who had followed him without hesitation or question during his attempted coupe, into imprisonment in the Phantom Zone, and during the years of fruitless searching that came after, who had trusted him with what he saw now was beyond reason—had been alive.

He had followed Kal-El's advice assiduously the past few days. He had focused as best he could on one thing at a time, both with his senses and his thoughts. Kal-El's voice, or alternatively on ripping his head off. The tastes of the food this planet offered (or at least the less pungent offerings of it Kal-El brought to bear). The conversion of the world engine power console. Except for those first few minutes after his awakening and a few scattered instances when he had let his attention slip, he had not thought on his failure. Never on his grief. For how he could process the enormity of either without going mad? He pressed the heel of his hand harder into his right eye socket, and if his vision flickered through a blinding kaleidoscope of images outside of what he had once considered the visual spectrum, if the screech of the wind overrode all rational thought, if his shoulders shook, if he could not breathe... if he lost himself in that for a time, well. At least there was no one left to fail.

\--*--

He fell asleep sitting up. When he woke, it was night again, and, based on similar sleeping positions in the past, he should have had a crick in his neck, but didn't. He spent the next few hours moving the scout ship and world engine's debris into the hillside's newly-made caves, tinkering with the matter replicator, and trying not to feel disgusted with himself. To mourn when one lost comrades was normal, but this had gone beyond the acceptable. The fact that this loss was on a greater—personally incalculable, his mind supplied before he shunted the thought aside—scale was irrelevant. If this had been any other situation, he would have buried himself in his work while the emotional wounds scarred over naturally, but that was the problem. There were no duties for him to perform. No end goal.

The matter replicator did, in fact, have some options for provisions, but it turned out that eighteen-thousand years of cultural drift meant that he had to scroll to near the bottom of the list to find anything he recognized, and even then the twist cake with leevin tasted strange. Too sour. It was still familiar enough to sit heavily in his stomach, which he ignored in favor of trying to assess his current situation clinically.

So. He was stuck on an alien world. He had no allies and would in fact have quite a few enemies if anyone besides Lois Lane, Kal-El's surrogate mother, and Kal-El himself had seen his face. His senses were enhanced past the point of practicality and needed constant focus to keep them from overwhelming him since his armor and helmet were unusable. He knew very little about the world itself.

He was, however, fluent in all the planet's languages due to the translation upload everyone had undergone as soon as they come within sensor range of the planet, was seemingly invulnerable to harm due to this planet's atmosphere and its sun's radiation, and the only actual threat to him seemed reluctant to pose any kind of threat at all.

The difficulty was deciding what to do with this information. Every Kryptonian was born to carry out a function, a purpose, and Zod had no idea what to do now that his own purpose was unfulfillable. Had Kal-El truly dealt with this feeling of aimlessness his entire life? Had Jor-El seriously considered that a blessing for his son, to not know what he was meant for? It was horrible. He didn't know how Kal-El hadn't killed himself years ago.

By the time Kal-El returned three days later, Zod had carried in the more delicate equipment out of the weather and calibrated the cloaking device to cover the hill. This would have consumed an unsustainable amount of energy if the key were being used to power anything else but the matter replicator, which by itself was terribly inefficient but even used more frequently could not match the power requirements of the rest of the ship. He had also found a nearby stream, bathed in it as best he could with a hard bar of cleanser created by the replicator, and realized that his knife—which had survived Kal-El's rending of his armor—no longer qualified as sharp enough for him to shave with it.

Kal-El's actual arrival was actually preceded by him hovering over Zod's location near the largest cave entrance for a good thirty seconds before Zod noticed and wondered what he was doing before he realized that the cloaking device was still on and walked outside of its boundaries. Kal-El's vague look of concerned puzzlement visibly shifted to relief as soon as he came into view. “I thought this was the right place, but it just looks like blasted rock from the outside. That cloaking device sure is something, huh?” He dropped down from the sky, holding above his head some sort of sofa upon which was piled what seemed to be several lamps, a flimsy wooden box, a large pile of textiles, and... some sort of engine? “Anyway, I brought some stuff for the Fortress. My- well, I had a lot of stuff already, and my apartment in Metropolis won't fit even half of it, so I figured I might as well make it comfortable out here.”

“You live in Metropolis?” The mind scan hadn't indicated that he had ever been to the city in more than passing.

Kal-El shook his head. “Well, not yet. Not for a few months until some of the damage caused by your ship is fixed up. But even if the interview Lois got me at the _Daily Planet_ pans out, I won't be able to afford any place bigger than a postage stamp.” He shrugged, the set of his mouth suddenly uncomfortable, and walked past Zod through the perimeter of the cloaking device. “Just as well-” Zod had to take a few steps back to follow Kal-El's ramblings as the cloak blocked it out, “-for show. I've never figured out the trick of sleeping well in cities that big. Too many noises to ignore when all I want to do is relax.” He walked through the cave entrance and into the largest cavern he had carved out of the rock several days prior before setting down his load. “So if I get the job, I'll probably mostly be commuting from- Smallville.”

Zod wondered if Kal-El seriously thought that omitting all mention of his adoptive mother—and worse, doing so poorly—would lead to Zod eventually forgetting of her existence. Well. Now that Zod had decided against provoking Kal-El into killing him, actually pointing out that he remembered the woman and Kal-El could stop dancing around her as a subject seemed counterproductive, so he dropped that line of inquiry before bothering to start it. “The _Daily Planet_ is the research association where Lois Lane works, yes? You wish to pursue that line of employment as well?” On Krypton, such inquiries had been limited largely to the investigative division of the police force, which had itself been comprised of members of the military. Based on what had been observed in Lois Lane's mind, all of those were separate organizations here, and the _Daily Planet's_ focus was only occasionally on violations of the law.

Kal-El nodded. “I think so. It would let me keep my ear to the ground. I could go into dangerous situations without anyone questioning it, know what crimes are happening that I could stop. I could help people in ways that others can't.”

Zod stared at Kal-El, unbelieving. He knew that Kal-El had been successful in hiding his existence from most of Earth until he himself had announced his terms for Kal-El's surrender, but... “And this is a new decision? What were you doing before?”

Kal-El grinned sheepishly, but his eyes were dark and a little bitter. “Nothing. Drifting from meaningless job to meaningless job, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. Only feeling like my life had purpose when I was helping people, but I was scared... scared of what people would do once they found out what I was capable of. So every time I used my abilities, I'd disappear. Move on. It wasn't until I found the scout ship and the key my parents had found with me brought up my birth father's AI and told me what I was meant to do that I began to feel confidence in what I had been doing all along.”

“... So you felt purposeless until Jor-El's AI told you what your parents had meant for you.”

Kal-El nodded, visibly gone wary at the studied evenness of Zod's tone. “Well, kind of. What the AI said, it just felt right- Zod?”

What started as a quiet chuckle soon evolved into what Zod objectively knew to be a borderline hysterical laugh. Even with his hand pressed against his mouth, he couldn't entirely stifle the slightly wild edge to the sound. Kal-El's face twisted, anxious. “Zod, what is it?”

 _So much for all your talk of free will, eh Jor-El?_ It took Zod a moment to restrain himself, and still he hadn't entirely returned to his prior state of calm when he replied, “It's nothing. I have just spent the past few days wondering how you had coped with having no idea what you were supposed to do with your life, and here it turns out that you hadn't. That it was just as awful as I always imagined it would be.”

At that, Kal-El let slip a wry smile. “That... didn't come out great, did it. But I _did_ know the right thing to do before the AI pointed it out to me. I did. I was just afraid-”

“Don't.” At least his voice was finally coming out level, at least he had control over that even as he felt his eyes begin to burn. “Don't you _dare_ to try to cover up Jor-El's hypocrisy.” His voice cracked ridiculously before he could make it halfway through the sentence, and the feeling of burning in his eyes intensified to the point it actually started to hurt. By the light of Rao, was he seriously about to _cry_ because of a minor betrayal of a friend dead for decades? “The man was so blind he couldn't see beyond his own righteousness-”

At that point, Kal-El's expression had grown from mildly concerned to increasingly alarmed. “Zod, you've got to calm down _right now_ -”

It was at that moment that Zod's heat vision kicked in and blew Kal-El through the opposite wall.


	3. Chapter 3

“Well,” Kal-El said a few minutes later, his clothes down through his bodysuit singed away on the upper half of his front and the skin on his chest visibly blistered, “that's doorway number three.” He sighed. “I liked that costume.”

Zod, lying on his back outside the cave where Kal-El had dragged him after shaking off being blasted back into a nearby slope, did not turn his gaze away from the sky. At the moment, it seemed prudent, as he had just discovered that closing his eyes to cut off the heat vision once it had started was literally impossible. “The matter replicator can make you more. Bodysuits featuring the emblem of your House are some of the default options.” It was as much of an apology as he was willing to give, seeing as he had possessed no way of knowing that particular ability was set off by intense, unchecked emotion.

“That's good I guess.” Only a beat of silence passed before, “You were close to my father, weren't you. I mean, I already knew that you knew each other and you respected him a lot, but-”

“Yes.”

“What was he-”

“Not now, Kal-El.” He forced himself to take a deep breath and exhale it slowly to stave off another burst of anger, as those apparently now caused uncontrolled blasts of painful, superheated energy to emanate from his eyes.

Fortunately, Kal-El seemed willing to let the matter drop. “Okay. I'll go set up the generator and try and get the replicator to make me a new costume. You... should probably stay out here for a little bit.” There was the sound of walking which almost immediately stopped when Kal-El crossed the cloaking device's perimeter. Zod stayed outside until he could think of Jor-El without his jaw clenching, then rolled to his feet and followed. Already the cave was lit with the lamps, a quiet rumble in the background—matched with the smell of noxious, vaguely worrying fumes—likely indicating the activation of what Kal-El had called the generator. Kal-El himself was squatting in front of the matter replicator with a frustrated frown, cycling through the different selections of ship interior paneling, of all things.

“I understand surveying all available options, but none of those are intended for use planet-side.”

Kal-El shook his head, not taking his eyes away from the screen display. “It's not that. I just can't find the list for clothes.”

Zod frowned. The language was a bit archaic, but the replicator was still designed fairly intuitively- oh. Of course. “You don't know Kryptonian.” It wasn't a question, but Kal-El still shook his head again, this time with his lips pursed together stubbornly as if he expected censure. Zod ignored that in favor of walking up beside him and bringing up the array of bodysuits with three taps on the screen before pointing at the green character for 'create' in the upper right. “Touch that after you've made your selection.” He left Kal-El to scan through the list himself—as at the very least images were included for the choices—and walked away to look around the now somewhat-furbished cave, trying to ignore the absurd feeling that yet something else had been lost.

There was no reason for Kal-El to read Kryptonian, to speak it; his power key with Jor-El's AI had likely possessed at least basic translation software that explained why the AI had been able to communicate with Kal-El at all, but Krypton had always geared its tech towards learning aliens' languages, not towards teaching their own. Kryptonian scientists had thoroughly analyzed their own species' linguistic centers of the brain to make language upload possible, but the idea of a Kryptonian being raised off-world by non-Krytonians, that he wouldn't be taught the language of their people from birth... it had not been considered a possibility. Alien linguistics had languished as a field anyway after the pull back from the colonies, but the software to upload the Kryptonian language had _never_ existed. And as such, he stood in a room with an adult Kryptonian—the only other Kryptonian alive—who knew the meaning of the symbol of his House and exactly _nothing_ else.

But it didn't matter. It didn't. Kryptonian was a borderline useless language now anyway.

With some effort, he dragged his attention to focus outward and stopped near the center of the cave, glancing around. The lamps had been scattered evenly about to bring as much light as possible, some of the textiles hanging over the main cave entrance now made a sort of door, and the generator sat in the corner of the cave right next to the secondary entrance with cords connecting it to the lamps. Still sitting on the sofa was the rest of the fabric—at least half of which appeared to be clothing—and the box, which upon inspection contained cups of various make, cutlery, long rubbery cords, and a hinged bit of plastic entwined with metal laying on the bottom beneath everything else.

Wary of repeating his last experience with Earth tableware, he grasped the sturdiest looking of the cups as lightly as possible, half-expecting it to deform where his fingers touched. The fact that it did not made him examine it more closely. It was made of metal, and though he had some trouble on this planet being sure of such things, it was felt heavier than it should have been based on its mass and what little he knew about human physical capabilities. Even stranger, the entire cup was covered in tiny impressions of fingers no larger than those a very small child would make, the deepest of them at least partially hammered out.

“That was my cup while I was growing up. My dad made it in a friend's machine shop after I crushed three sippy cups in a row.”

Zod turned to look at Kal-El, who was now leaning against the sofa with a new bodysuit thrown over one arm, and the question must have been obvious in his eyes because Kal-El continued with, “He died when I was eighteen. Could have saved him. He stopped me, didn't want me revealing my secret. Looking back, he meant well, but... it was so stupid. I swore after that I would never let anyone get hurt again just so I could continue hiding what I could do.” He shrugged ruefully. “Which admittedly has come back to bite me in the ass sometimes, but I've never really regretted it.”

Kal-El himself started rummaging through the box, picking up every cup—each, Zod realized, more delicate than the last—in turn and placing them on the ground. “It gets easier, over time. It never really gets _easy_ , but...” he trailed off, seemingly unable to make that reassuring.

“How have you not broken this world?” Forget violence done on purpose; Kal-El had lived in Earth's towns, amongst its populace, for his entire life. Fire erupted from his eyes when provoked; in a moment of inattention, the strongest of materials shattered in his grasp. And yet- “How have you not at least killed already?”

Kal-El's shrugged again, not looking directly at him. “My powers ramped up over time. I wasn't always this strong, so I had time to get used to things before everything started to feel like it was made of tissue paper. But it was mostly practice. And focus. And fear. A whole lot of fear of what could go wrong if for a split second I let myself go.” He gestured to the cups that now sat at his feet. “The cups are for the practice part, since even if you don't like humans that much, I figured even you wouldn't much enjoy killing someone by accident.”

He didn't even sound angry; hadn't, in fact, since Zod had originally woken up. He clearly _remembered_ what Zod had done, so... “Why are you here?”

Kal-El blinked, clearly puzzled. “I had some stuff to bring over...? Or is this more of a metaphysical question?”

Zod shook his head. “No. I mean, why are you here, with me? I have already agreed to your government's terms. You have allies and... family on this planet. Why are you not with them, right now? Are you that afraid of me breaking my word? I won't; there's no point-”

“You're the only one left.” The interruption was enough to startle Zod into silence. It not particularly loud, but Kal-El’s voice contained more intensity than Zod had seen out of him since his defense of his adoptive mother over a week ago. “Do you think I don't- you're the only one left, okay? I wondered my entire _life_ what I was, where I was from, what I was meant for. Just because I wasn't self-centered enough to prioritize my own desires over the existence of the human race doesn't mean it didn't _matter_. The first time I saw your second-in-command walk off that ship, before anything even remotely sensible entered my head, my first thought was 'holy shit, she's like _me_.' And yes, I probably should hate you; you tried to kill me, my mom, everyone I've ever known. You _did_ kill a lot of people. But you're _not_ crazy, I don't have to protect Earth from you anymore, and when you pulverized that paper cup a few days ago it took most of what I had to not smile like an idiot because that same thing has happened to me dozens of times. And for the first time in my life, I felt- I felt like I wasn't-”

Kal-El abruptly stopped and ran his hand over his eyes, breathing deeply. Zod blinked, a little stunned. “I killed your father.”

“You have more to grieve from that than I do.” Kal-El pulled his hand away from his face, his eyes red (though in the less immediately threatening way) but determined. “I want to learn Kryptonian. I want to learn about Krypton, my parents. And in return, I'll teach you whatever you want to know about living as a Kryptonian on Earth. Even if you don't know what you want to be doing the rest of your life, there's some basic stuff that will be handy whatever you do.

“So. Sound good? Anything you'd like to know?”

Still feeling somewhat taken aback, Zod let slip the first thing that came into his head. “How do you shave?”

\--*--

After Kal-El stopped laughing—which took far longer than Zod thought the question warranted—it turned out it was possible to lower the intensity of their heat vision, which could then be reflected off of reflective surfaces and used to burn off unwanted hair. He then went on to explain that the hinged piece of plastic in the box was a portable computer which gave access to the public compilation of information available on what Kal-El called 'the internet,' “Though I think you'll have to use it outside of the cloak for it to work, since the modem is wireless and I doubt a signal can get through. You can charge it with the generator, though,” which Kal-El advised keeping off except when necessary due to it running on a finite resource called gasoline that Kal-El had to purchase. “Krypton had computers, right? And you can read English as well as speak it?”

“I can figure it out, Kal-El. Go home to your mother.” Zod regretted the flippant remark as soon as he made it, but there was no tightening in Kal-El at the mention of his parent, just a grin and a wave before taking off.

Kal-El did, in fact, acquire the job at the _Planet_ , which he informed Zod of via the second message he sent to the electronic message repository he had set up for Zod at some point; the first had been reference links to a commonly used general information database and a research algorithm. An inquiry into the database indicated the _Planet_ was not in fact a civilian analogue of police investigation but instead something completely unknown on Krypton. While their efforts occasionally assisted law enforcement, for the most part they were focused on informing the populace—for a small fee—about what seemed to be anything and everything. The decisions of the powerful, available recreation and entertainment, and—yes—recent criminal activity.

Considering that Kal-El had no formal training in investigation or synthesizing data, both of which seemed required to work as a 'reporter' at as prestigious an institution as the _Planet_ appeared to be, Zod strongly suspected the intervening hand of Lois Lane—who, based on her article in the database, carried some influence in the field—which was only sensible on her part.

Curiosity eventually drove him to look up his own name—or at least the closest English linguistic equivalent—and was a bit surprised at the paucity of information. Even if Kal-El had limited dissemination of his own knowledge and Lois Lane had stayed quiet to protect Kal-El, the military alone was aware of more than what was available for reading. Like of how close Earth's denizens had come to extinction. Or whether he himself was alive (reportedly not, though this at least Zod had expected based on Kal-El's earlier statements about keeping his existence—and thus the agreement with Kal-El's government—quiet).

Even with the deficiencies concerning more sensitive information, however, the sheer quantity of data available was nearly unfathomable. He could search for articles on the most trivial of subjects—pancakes, for example—and take an entire day or more reading what he found, sitting outside in the sun.

It was just as well the internet proved so time consuming, as he had little idea what to do with himself when he wasn't using it or Kal-El wasn't around. Once Kal-El had given him some fumbled, poorly worded instruction—which only really offered clarity on how little time Kal-El had spent thinking about it—on how to use his heat vision at will, he had grasped the technique quickly enough but was discouraged from actually spending more than few minutes a day getting the knack of it (at least half of which every other day was spent shaving) after the disclosure it never stopped feeling like your eyes were boiling inside your own skull. And that it was actually rather hard to see for a while afterward (already noted). And extended use bestowed migraines.

The 'cup test' Kal-El had put to him as a way of mastering his strength was at least less hazardous but ceased to be a challenge about a month in. While he was relaxed. Which still meant three of the ten were in pieces at the end and Zod was left feeling no way qualified to interact with the fragility of this world or any of its population even if he had wanted to.

Kal-El actually did spend more time at the ill-named Fortress than Zod had expected even after beginning his duties at the _Planet_. Though at least a quarter of that time was spent sleeping on the sofa, he was also far from idle. In the three months since the hillside had been hollowed out, Kal-El had installed hinged doors on all three entrances, covered the walls in colorful fabric and the floors in concrete before carpeting it, brought in a wooden table, four chairs, and a wardrobe where he kept at least five changes of clothing at all times, and figured out how to get the replicator to scan and reproduce his favorite foods (most of them involving meat or some variety of pie), though he still proclaimed it inferior to his mother's efforts.

Zod mostly watched, somewhat begrudgingly admiring of Kal-El's skill at basic carpentry and construction, while Kal-El spent the time used installing the first door to quiz him about Krypton. He had started by asking about his mother—“my birth mom, I mean”—though that conversation did not last long after Zod admitted that he had not known Lara Lor-Van terribly well. She had been a gracious and intelligent conversationalist the few times they had spoken, but that was rare beyond basic pleasantries as they had little in common beyond Jor-El and no reason to socialize professionally. It had been generally known that her focus was genetics and she enjoyed studying botany as a side-hobby in her spare time. She had been on her tenth year of marriage to Jor-El by the end, and the two had been betrothed since they were young once it was determined that they were compatible.

Kal-El didn’t push much after that about his mother, though he did ask, “Not Lara El?”

“She wasn’t from the House of El. She was from a lesser House in the science caste.”

“But she was married to my father.”

“So?”

“So… did that not make her an El?”

“Genetic manipulation is not traditional in the event of a marriage, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Cultural differences presenting an obvious wall to understanding for the time being, Kal-El—after returning to the Fortress the next evening and beginning the installation of the second door—tactfully moved on to asking Zod about the Kryptonian language directly.

“Table.”

“ _Chas_.”

“Wall hangings.”

“ _Dhoia thron_ if they're intended for decoration. If they are only utilitarian, than _dhoia_ is omitted.”

“Concrete?”

“ _Ekmun_ , though the direct translation is something like 'stone that was once liquid used for building.'”

They made their way to the common verbs and adjectives eventually but had not yet progressed to sentence structure by the time Kal-El came around to one of the obvious questions. “What does _Zod_ mean?”

“It was one of the ten Great Houses, same as El.”

Kal-El frowned. “Well yeah, but _El_ means hope, right?”

Zod shook his head. “I think Jor-El's AI might have unintentionally misled you.” It was easier to speak his name now than it once had been, as long as he did not let his thoughts linger too much. The dull pain remained; he was beginning to believe it would never leave. “The _symbol_ of the House of El means hope, but if you were to try to pronounce it, it would actually be _shareth_.”

Kal-El gestured at Zod's chest. “Alright, so what's the symbol of the House of Zod mean?”

“Altruism.” He ignored the surprised widening of Kal-El's eyes. “The House of Zod has- had- traditionally given the most in the service of Krypton's people. It was a point of pride for us.

“All of the ten Great Houses used one of the Kryptonian virtues as their House's symbol. The eleventh virtue, _zedeh—_ home—was supposed to bind us all together.

“It did not really work even with all the intermarrying between Houses that was encouraged. Members of the different Great Houses just started marrying members of the lesser Houses in the same caste, like as was arranged between your father and mother, and it was only in the general courses required of all Kryptonians in their youth that most members of the different castes had the opportunity to interact with members of other castes for any length of time.”

“Was that where you met my father?”

Zod shook his head. That memory, at least, did not hurt. “Jor-El was seventeen years my elder and already assuming some of the duties as the heir of his House by the time I was given my commission. My first assignment was as the adjutant of the commanding officer at the outpost where Jor-El was doing research into the changing composition of the local river water. He mentioned offhand to my commander that he was looking for a decent _regas_ opponent—it's a type of strategic board game,” he explained at Kal-El's quizzical look, “and Major Vex told him that I had been the reigning _regas_ champion for my last four years at the academy.”

\--*--

He had been so angry at the time. He himself was heir to the House of Zod, but his predecessor was still relatively young, and unlike Jor-El—poised to inherit at any moment as his grandmother grew increasingly senile—Zod had no expectation of assuming power for a century or more. Jor-El was the head scientist of the outpost. People were already deferring to Jor-El as future leader of the science caste. There had been no question of refusing when Jor-El's robotic servant, Kelex, came to his quarters inquiring whether he had time for a _regas_ game, but that did not stop him from resenting losing what little personal time he had.

He was thus in no mood to defer properly to what society dictated to be his better and thoroughly crushed Jor-El three games in a row. However, when Jor-El demanded a fourth game and Zod saw that he was not going to be let go for the evening until Jor-El had been given satisfaction, he started to lose on purpose.

Jor-El stopped him nine moves in. “I may not be any match for you, but do not think me so poor a _regas_ player that I cannot tell when someone is throwing the game.” Zod glanced at him, somewhat worried as to his opponent's mood as Jor-El had grown increasingly grim over the course of the evening—though after gaining some familiarity with Jor-El's expressions, in retrospect that had just been Jor-El actually starting to pay attention to his opponent's strategy—but Jor-El was smiling, in a better humor than Zod had ever seen the man.

Zod, reluctantly, continued in the same vein as the previous three games, and though it was a much closer match this time, in the end it was still Jor-El surrendering his base. And yet he was still smiling, resetting the board for what Zod sincerely dreaded to be a fifth game—already only a few hours remained before he was due to report for duty—as he commented, “That's what I get for going a decade without touching my _regas_ board, I suppose.

“Same time tomorrow?”

The relief at being done for the night had what must have been an obvious war with his dismay at the prospect of not getting a full night's sleep for the entirety of his posting here, for Jor-El actually chuckled. “Only one game, I promise, and I will make no pretensions at being your equal. An instructional match, if you will; I'm quite interested to know how you routed me so thoroughly two-thirds of the way through our second game.”

That was far more acceptable, and Zod nodded and rose to leave. Jor-El nodded to him in return, suddenly solemn again. “Sleep well, Lieutenant Zod.”

“And you, Lord El.”

Over the next few nights, it became clear that Jor-El had not just been trying to salve his own wounded pride when he had mentioned being out of practice, as each subsequent game saw Zod struggling harder and harder to defeat Jor-El. A moment of inattention on Zod's part on the fifth evening—busy thinking about the next day's duty roster instead of the game—cost him most of his strong positioning, and an hour later he found himself staring at the section of the board where Jor-El's pieces surrounded his base on all sides with no avenue of retreat.

Across from him, Jor-El grinned, obviously pleased with himself. “Ready to surrender, lieutenant?”

“No.”

Jor-El raised an eyebrow. “Defending your base to the last man, then.”

Zod had been not in the best of moods. He hadn't lost a _regas_ game in years, not even to his instructors, and to do so to a member of the science caste, of all things, had made him snappish and perhaps not choose his words as wisely as he could have. For the first time he truly forgot himself and all semblance of decorum and made what was, for a Kryptonian, an unconscionable mistake: he spoke as impudently to a superior as he would to an equal. “The vast majority of your army is downriver from my remaining territory. I was planning on poisoning the water supply.”

And Jor-El... burst out laughing, the sound so unexpected, so out of character for the persona Jor-El presented as the unforgiving, somber lead scientist of the outpost, that it startled the both of them. Zod jerked in his seat, and Jor-El's laughter cut off abruptly, though the smile lingered around the corners of his eyes. “I don't think the rules account for that.”

And Zod reluctantly, almost involuntarily found himself smiling back. “An unforgivable failure of the game, Lord El.”

Jor-El was waving off his form of address before he even finished talking. “I think anyone who has defeated me in seven games of _regas_ in a row has earned the right to drop the titles while we are in private.”

Which was a major breach of etiquette in of itself, but the protocol for dealing with disparate ranks between members of different castes had always been a little vague, and of course it had only been proper to reciprocate in kind.

After that, the nights spent playing _regas_ stopped being a chore and slowly became the one thing Zod had to look forward to during his posting. A few months in, the _regas_ games themselves had ceased being the point and became merely the setting over which they spoke about matters both substantial and trivial, the diverging points of view espoused due to their differing upbringings fascinating to both of them. By the time Jor-El's research was completed two years later, he was already arranging to make sure Zod would be part of his team's military escort at his next laboratory stationing, and Zod certainly gave no objection when told of his next assignment.

\--*--

Kal-El was frowning when Zod wrapped up his account, though the expression looked more anxious than disappointed. “You... were you already head of your House when Krypton was destroyed?”

He wasn't sure what that had to do with the story he'd just told, but- “Yes.”

“How old are you?”

Zod mentally backtracked through what he had just told Kal-El to find the source of the younger Kryptonian's confusion. Ah. “Eighty-four. My predecessor died long before his time while quelling an uprising on the northeast continent. I came into power as head of my House just a few years after your father did.”

Kal-El, if anything, now looked even more concerned. “But... I age the same as everyone else here.”

Was he worried about a shortened lifespan? It certainly would not be as long as it could have been, seeing as Kal-El almost certainly lacked the genetic reinforcing of a Kryptonian born normally, but the gap was not likely to be egregious. “Kryptonians mature at about the same rate as humans.” He thought. He wasn't sure as to the total veracity of the information on that database. “The differences in lifespan will be far more apparent later.” He glanced over Kal-El critically, comparing him to what he recalled of the younger officers less than a decade out of the Academy. “You look about right.”

“How long do we live?”

“The average on Krypton for a member of one of the Great Houses was a little more than three hundred years, with proper medical care. Here? With the energy of the yellow sun and the planet's atmosphere constantly strengthening us?” Zod shrugged. “I have no idea. It could be quite a bit longer.”

Which did absolutely nothing to pacify Kal-El, whose mouth thinned into an almost invisible line. “I'm going to outlive everyone, then. Everyone I've ever known.”

Perhaps one day those words would elicit empathy instead of just a wave of empty bitterness.

That day was not today. “How ever will you cope.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was more to Clark and Zod's conversation about Lara, but it got dumb and quickly degenerated into my thoughts on making the Kryptonian naming schemes explicable in an advanced, gender-equal society, namely  
> 1) Lor-Van is just the result of two small Houses, Lor and Van, merging some generations back to preserve bloodlines and resources. When this happens, there is still only one dash in the name because Kryptonian doesn't use dashes anyway and all of this is just poor translation of Kryptonian names into English, and in English, two dashes in a name looks stupid.  
> 2) The only reason Kal is an El is because Jor was the heir (and then head) of his House and Lara wasn't, so they needed Kal to be an El and not a Lor-Van since he would theoretically be inheriting a House (you know, if his existence wasn't blasphemous).


	4. Chapter 4

It was by silent, mutual agreement that it was best for them to not be within a hundred kilometers of each other at the moment that Kal-El flew off almost immediately afterward. Zod was left with the desire to punch something until his hands bled, but the only thing on this planet hard enough for that to even be possible had just left, so instead he spent the next hour turning the ground around the Fortress into glass. It took ten minutes for the red pinpricks of light to fade from his eyes enough for him to see properly again; it took far longer for his brain to stop feeling like he had melted part of it along with the ground. He welcomed the pain viciously. He would have welcomed a fight even more, but that was a bad idea, even though at the moment he couldn't think of the reasons why.

Just then, it was very, very easy to despise Earth. For the gall it had, a soft, underdeveloped backwater, to survive when Krypton had not. But the feeling wasn't sustainable. Thirty-three years of distance had let reason leak in: Krypton had brought about its own ruin. Something had been broken about it. The Council had definitely been part of it, and Zod still blamed them, but their decisions had been predictable. Set as if in stone. Their people, stunted and stagnant, set on making everything about one generation the same as the next. There had even be talk of cloning, near the end. A people, never changing, on a planet and in a universe which did.

The end of Krypton as it stood had been assured. Jor-El had told Zod that enough when they had been young, but back then, before the mining of the planet's core, the scientist had thought that whatever shock fractured them would be enough to jolt them out of complacency, would cause Kryptonians to reexamine themselves and be revitalized as a people. The destruction of the world itself, this near-total devastation of its populace, had been unthinkable. But so it had transpired. Only two Kryptonians remained, one who knew nothing of what he was, while the other... was a relic of a dead world.

He had not wandered more than two kilometers from the Fortress since following Kal-El to its future location three months ago. Three months of doing nothing, of letting himself wither away. A slower, but no less final killing of self, if not of his body. His life as it stood... was also not sustainable.

Kal-El came back the next day with pie. He ignored the newly-reflective terrain with an indifference that bordered on studious in favor of walking up to Zod where he sat by the river and trying to hand him the still-steaming tin. Zod just stared at it without taking it. There was a fork stuck in the middle.

“It's pumpkin.” Zod just shifted his stare from the tin to Kal-El, who was starting to look defensive. “My mom made it.”

Kal-El had brought his mother's pie to the Fortress before. It had always been conspicuously for his own consumption. “Then why are you giving it to me?”

“She made it for you. There's even hardly any sugar in it, since I told her you don't like sweet stuff.” Somehow, Kal-El's face managed to look both combative and hopeful at the same time, and Zod was abruptly aware that this seemingly innocuous gesture held far more import than a pastry reasonably should.

He took the tin without further comment but didn't remove his gaze from Kal-El's face. “And why would she do that.”

“She likes feeding people. And, well, you don't know my mom—and this doesn't absolve you of needing to apologize, by the way—but it's also her way of letting me know she forgives you. For what you did to our house, among, well... everything else.”

Kal-El's adoptive mother was one human among billions, and thus was only important for the same reason Lois Lane was important: because she meant something to Kal-El and was therefore not easily ignored. It was still an odd thing to forgive such grave trespasses. “Your mother is a gracious woman.”

“She doesn't believe in holding grudges. Not that this didn't break some records for her, but I've always said mom could forgive anything. This just proves it.” Kal-El gaze skipped furtively over to the pie before returning to Zod. “Are you going to eat that?”

Zod put a forkful of the pastry into his mouth without looking away from Kal-El, not sure himself whether he was making some sort of gesture in return or just getting some petty satisfaction out of the way Kal-El's face predictably fell. It was actually fairly appetizing, as far as Earth fare went—only slightly sweet, without the greasy feeling Zod had grown accustomed to, tasting faintly like _torpas_ root—so he took a few more bites before giving in to Kal-El's pleading look and handing him back the tin.

Kal-El descended upon it like a starving man with what were quite frankly atrocious manners, but while Zod couldn't say he was feeling nostalgic—he had never known Jor-El at this age—he still found himself in no mood to make any noise of disapproval, too preoccupied with his own thoughts to care.

Kal-El was starting to swallow the last remnants of the pie when Zod said, “I'll be leaving tomorrow.”

Kal-El nearly choked, but managed to avoid that fate by pounding on his own chest a few times. He finally managed to gasp out, “What? Did you find another ship?”

“No. I meant leaving the vicinity of your Fortress. I have seen very little of your world. Almost everything I know of it is through that computer you gave me. Life was not meant to be lived vicariously.”

Kal-El opened his mouth to argue as if by impulse, but closed it slowly as he thought it over. Then he nodded. “I guess... you've got a point.”

\--*--

Kal-El managed to convince him to stay near the Fortress for another week while Kal-El gathered what he said were “Necessary supplies for someone wandering around North America who has no idea what they're doing. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about.”

He returned within the promised week with a backpack and what Zod knew enough now to recognize as a wallet which contained—Kal-El listing them out as he pointed—“Two hundred Canadian dollars, two hundred American dollars, a fake state ID—top quality, but the guy I know only does American, sorry—listing you as Andrew Sobol from Grand Forks, North Dakota, and a card with my cell number on it.” He tossed Zod the wallet before opening the backpack and pulling out a mobile phone. “I've also programmed my number into this, but better safe than sorry, right? It's a prepaid phone, so it can't be linked back to anyone.” He then handed Zod the phone as well. “Keep this stuff on you, but try to make sure it's stored places which can't be easily pickpocketed. Not that you couldn't see it coming, but it's annoying to deal with, all the same.” What followed was “A wool blanket lined with tarp, a towel, three changes of clothes and a pair of boots pretty close to your size if you entered your measurements into the replicator right—don't look at me like that, if you go anywhere near people, a bodysuit and that robe thing isn't going to cut it—a baseball cap, a bottle of liquid soap, a hand mirror, some plastic zip bags, your phone's charger, a portable hand crank generator for the charger, a lock for your bag—here's the key, by the way—the biggest map I could find of North America with our current location marked, a pen, a pencil, a lighter, a small cooking pot, a water bottle, you already have your own knife... and the best noise-canceling headphones available.” These last, Kal-El handed to Zod with a flourish.

Zod inspected what Kal-El laid out. The clothes looked relatively new, as did the phone and map (and the identification, of course—Zod briefly wondered when Kal-El had taken the image), but everything else... He picked up the towel and examined its worn fringe, the bleached stain on one side. “Most of this has been used before.”

“Well, yeah. This is my stuff.”

Zod glanced sharply at Kal-El; he wasn't in the mood for another Gesture. But Kal-El's expression was even, if somewhat wistful, as he toyed with the baseball cap before returning it to the backpack. “How long are you thinking of doing this?”

“How long did you?”

Kal-El grimaced at that. “Fifteen years. Not really the same, though.”

“No,” Zod agreed; for one thing, he had no intention of living amongst humans as Kal-El did, the optimism of some of the supplies Kal-El had given him notwithstanding. But he also did not really have an answer, so he shrugged on the backpack, nodded at Kal-El, and walked away, leaving the Fortress behind him.

He had explored the wilderness of Krypton—or at least what remained of it on the southern continent—in his youth; northern Canada, as it turned out, was exactly nothing like that. Even without Earth's lesser gravity and its atmosphere's empowering properties, Zod thought he still would have found it restful by comparison. The weather was milder, the animals smaller and for the most part not attempting to eat him (though perhaps some of the insects were trying; Zod could not really tell). From what he had read, most of the plants were not poisonous, some were edible, and none of them were mobile. There was abundant water.

And nothing to challenge him. Nothing to do but look around and think.

The first day, he jumped to the top of a mountain and spent the night in the snow looking up at the alien sky, wondering what he was doing. There was no more purpose to be found out here than there had been in self-imposed quarantine at Kal-El's Fortress, only more time alone with himself. The problem was, Zod knew he wasn't looking for a new direction; he just longed for his old one, but that would not be found anywhere. During the thirty-three years of wandering across the galaxy, they had visited every listed Kryptonian colony, searched every found database. There had been no survivors, not a single one. Even the scout ship on Earth was the first they had found with an intact genesis chamber. And so this was it.

On an impulse, he pulled the phone out of its pocket in the backpack and flipped it open. He quickly typed in a message and sent it off to Kal-El's number before he let himself think better of it.

_What made you decide the people of this planet were worth protecting?_

Far more quickly than he had expected, his phone gave a tone indicating a return message. _What made you decide the people of Krypton were worth protecting?_

 _Because unlike you, it was what I was born to do_ , he almost retorted, before he realized that was even less of an answer than Kal-El's response had been. That had been why _he_ had worked so hard to protect Krypton; it was no defense of why it had been worth doing so. _Because there was no other reason for me to exist_ answered the question even less. Over an hour passed with him staring at the glowing screen of the phone, waiting for an answer to come to him, before he realized he had none to give and flipped the phone shut.

\--*--

He stayed two weeks alongside the same patch of river next to a waterfall. It was more-or-less pleasant for the first three days; though the noise-canceling headphones definitely came into use at night, the waterfall was a sort of natural white noise generator all on its own. It did not take long, however, before he remembered that he had not actually cared much for the lack of amenities in the wilderness on Krypton and there was a reason civilizations past a certain point tried their best to get as far away from the natural state of the world as possible. His expeditions to southern Krypton had also been part of basic survival training, far from the aimlessness of his current life… which was making him start to feel like a knife that had been sharpened to a brittle edge for lack of any better use.

He did not like feeling brittle, even if the rawness of his nerves felt disturbingly familiar when he spared any time to think about it. Perhaps he had been this way for years and only now had found the time to notice.

Which, while appropriately philosophical for his current mood, did not actually help get rid of it. Learning that he apparently dealt poorly with aimlessness was more productive, so if for no other reason than to give himself something useful to do, he spent the next day teaching himself how to fly and then the rest of the week practicing. It was not, fortunately, as inherently flawed an ability as the heat vision and didn't actually take up any more energy or concentration than walking once he grew accustomed to it. Near the end of the second week, he indulged a whim and let himself fly straight up, waiting to grow light-headed as the air became thin.

It never happened. He broke through the outer layer of the troposphere, the stratosphere. Flying by a satellite labeled _Wayne Enterprises_ in the lower reaches of the exosphere confirmed his growing suspicion that his body was now effectively self-pressurized to the point of making a spacesuit irrelevant.

It was so blessedly silent. For the first time in months, he could hear absolutely nothing, with even the sound of his own heartbeat muted to tolerable levels. And he could _relax_. The constant strain of blocking out external stimuli, of only concentrating on the one thing he wanted to see or hear, even while sleeping, drained from his neck and shoulders like water. A tension headache so constant he had ceased to notice it fully receded as he let his eyes focus on nothing, staring out into the infinity of space.

If exhaling in relief had been an option at that point, he would have.

It was actually the need to breathe that forced him down about an hour later. It took him another hour, scanning along riverbanks from about a kilometer up, to find where he had left his supplies, as the rotation of the planet meant that direct descent found him above a different part of Canada entirely.

It was still worth it. He had started to believe that it would never be quiet again.

\--*--

And for the next four months, so it followed.

He never stayed away from the Fortress for more than a few weeks at a time; for one, he ran out of food fairly quickly, and though subsiding on the native plants was more than possible, it never actually tasted what he would call palatable. Kal-El never seemed to mind; after the first time Zod came and went from the Fortress without running into the other Kryptonian, he actually received a text the next day simply saying, _Next time you pass through, text me._

He received a communique Kal-El about once a week regardless; after his first return to the Fortress, Kal-El apparently took that as a sign that his wanderings were not a subtle plea for solitude (which, fair enough, as they hadn't been) and started texting him anytime something even remotely exciting happened in his life. The first time he got a byline in the _Daily Planet_ independent of Lois Lane that wasn't what Kal-El called a 'fluff piece'—an article about an attempted chemical spill cover up by a factory owned by the subsidiary of _LexCorp_ , a company which seemed to own a significant percentage of Kansas—at least five exclamation points were involved, which seemed excessive.

They did not talk over the phone. They spoke in person those times they were present at the Fortress concurrently, Zod usually skimming over missed issues in the online subscription to the _Planet_ Kal-El had procured for him while Kal-El himself questioned him on increasingly complex Kryptonian sentence structure, but somehow that never progressed to any willingness on either of their parts to call the other.

There had, from the very start, been headlines featuring Superman. Many of them were written, predictably, by Lois Lane, but they covered exploits from around the world. Helping refugees evacuate an area approached by wildfire. Saving the passengers of a crashing airplane. Largely nonpolitical actions no one could object to, when he was outside of Metropolis.

Inside of Metropolis was a different story.

After reading through yet another article about Superman threatening to thrown Lex Luthor in jail personally if he didn't stop his people from perpetuating yet another unethical business practice, Zod could only shake his head in disbelief. “You really wish this man to be your enemy.”

Kal-El, from his hunch at the table over a hamburger and a box of French fries, jutted his chin out aggressively. The effect had been somewhat ruined by the bulge of his cheeks before he swallowed and replied, “Who better?”

“Lex Luthor is a grasping merchant. Not a good man by any means, but not worth so much of your attention, especially after spending so much of your time as Clark Kent on him already. He has not committed a hundredth of the atrocities of some of the leaders in other countries I have read about. I don't understand the focus.”

Kal-El shook his head. “It's different. Luthor is hurting my _home_. His family has been ruining Kansas since before my parents were married. The amount of money Luthor's thrown around as a lobbyist has made it impossible for any business to compete with him throughout the state and he _still_ manages to find laws to break. If I can't get him to back off as Clark Kent, I have to try as Superman too.”

This seemed a strangely narrow definition of 'home' to Zod, but he supposed that was what came of being raised on a world that still had more than one ruling body. Just as divided as Krypton, only by geographical location instead of by the caste in which one was raised. Earth still had proper _wars_ , by the light of Rao. Kal-El was still thinking too small considering what he was capable of, but it was understandable, especially considering his inexperience. He would get over it eventually.

There was at least one thing Kal-El turned out to be right about, however; it was not terribly long—less than six weeks, all told—before he grew tired of exploring the Canadian wilderness and started seriously considering the merits of entering one of the small towns. For example, not that the food Kal-El habitually brought up to the Fortress was any indication, but apparently there were actually eating establishments that catered to those who didn't consume meat.

He would have to be even more careful than usual, of course; surrounded by humans, there was a very real chance he would have to make physical contact at one point—humans did not allow each other as much personal space as Kryptonians—and in the event of that he would just have to remain as still as possible. Cups notwithstanding, humans still seemed ridiculously breakable.

After pulling the dark blue sweater, the black pair of loose trousers, and the boots that Kal-El had supplied him with on over his bodysuit, he briefly amused himself by imaging what Jor-El would think if he saw him now: probably entertained to see Zod out of uniform, but mostly jealous. Jor-El had often discussed restarting the exploration program, re-opening communication with other species in their sector of space, and the chance to interact with an alien race with them none-the-wiser would have had him practically vibrating with excitement. Zod could almost hear him: “It's amazing, Dru: parallel evolution! To think we could so closely resemble a species which developed so far away from our own; I would almost imagine the genetic material in the crashed scout ship influenced them somehow, but their similarities to us must go back much further in time than a mere eighteen-thousand years. But it's all so superficial; look! Their genetic structure is so simple: only two biopolymer strands!”

Zod could practically see him now, pointing at everything like a child let out of his crèche for the first time. He'd probably in his enthusiasm grab Zod completely inappropriately by the shoulder at some point to try and drag him along to whatever new thing caught his eye, but of course Zod would let him; it was so rare for Jor-El to let himself get swept up in his passions that Zod would tolerate anything, to see him so-

He blinked, and the image faded from his mind as abruptly as it had appeared. And just like that, he was no longer amused. Old memories, forever shadowed by his own unworthiness of them. Thinking at the time that it had been necessary did not make his killing of Jor-El any less of a betrayal.

Foolish, without even having the excuse of Kal-El's urging, to pick at an old wound like it had scarred over when he had known for years that it had festered.

\--*--

He chose to wait to go into the town until the next day to give the burning sensation in his eyes time to fade. Of the many, many things he disliked about Earth, the perpetual feeling of having only tenuous control over his own body—after decades of regimented training to ensure it could always be relied upon even if all else failed—ranked very high. Nothing was instinctual anymore, not even repressing _beams of heat_ from shooting from his eyes. He briefly doubted the wisdom of entering a human population center... well, ever, but the fact that he had been out of food for three days and was in no mood to see Jor-El's son for a while finally decided him.

Even though it was still early in the morning, the sound of cars, of the walking crowds—of human civilization—momentarily blindsided him to the point he had to stop and focus on his hands for a moment to give himself a chance to block out the noise. Even then, he ducked into the nearest identifiable restaurant at the soonest opportunity, some of the cacophony of the street thankfully dying down as soon as the doors swung shut. He felt his shoulders ease as he exhaled. And to think Kal-El actually _lived_ like this.

“How many?”

He looked down. Superficial resemblance there may have been, but humans still tended to be what he would consider short. This one was in some sort of uniform and giving him a disinterested stare over a podium. “What?”

“How many for breakfast?”

Ah. “I'm alone.”

The woman gestured around the restaurant. “We haven't had the morning rush yet, so just seat yourself where ever's comfortable.”

There had been, fortunately, an open booth in a corner facing the door; some old habits were difficult to drop. The breakfast selection was unfortunately replete with what Kal-El seemed to consider fine dining, but after confirming that the name of oatmeal was descriptive—“We've got cinnamon and raisins too, if you want,”—he had requested that sans accoutrements from the server, a younger woman than the one who had greeted him, who had stared speculatively at his backpack resting next to him on the long seat before going to relay his order to the cook.

After she returned with the order, she strangely lingered, even after he thanked her and then made a point of ignoring her presence. “Where're you from?”

He had, at least, re-familiarized himself the previous day with the details of the false identity Kal-El had procured for him. “North Dakota. Grand Forks.”

“Bit of a trip.”

“Yes.”

“Why're you all the way up here? There's nothing here.”

That was factually inaccurate and thus likely hyperbole or some local vernacular of which he was ignorant, so he just replied, as tersely as possible, “Traveling through.”

“Going anywhere in particular?”

“The mountains further north.” Well, he would likely return to them eventually.

She continued to hover for a time as though she expected him to want to continue the conversation, but his focused attention on his oatmeal eventually deterred her and she wandered off.

The oatmeal was quite good, and his hunger chose that time to catch up with him. By the end of the hour, he had requested and consumed three more bowls of it, and the server eventually stopped lingering after each delivery, likely due to finally having work to stave off her seeming boredom as the restaurant slowly gained more customers.

The cost came listed on a bit of paper shortly after he was finished. Vaguely remembering some mention by Kal-El of having to pay the server separately from the price of the meal, he added about half-again the value of the oatmeal to the small pile of Canadian currency on the table, which despite seeming reasonable still had the server looking somewhat irritated at him from a nearby table as he walked out the door.

It had, in the past hour, managed to become even louder. He gave himself a second to wince in the doorway before deliberately—masochistically—turning to the right, further into town. He would at least explore something of this town before giving up on the experiment entirely.

In the end, it was only because he was keeping his focus determinedly on the ground to avoid being overwhelmed by the too-familiar proximity of the increasingly close mass of pedestrians that he noticed the child at all.

It was small; old enough to be walking, but not for more than the past few years. It was difficult to tell if it was the jostle of the crowd or just the usual lack of foresight of the very young that caused it, but either way, the child stumbled off the sidewalk and into the street just in time to be in the path of an oncoming truck.

Stepping out into the road himself, grabbing the child by the hood of its jacket, and quickly—but carefully—dragging it back onto the sidewalk was a remnant of instinct; like most members of the military caste, he had spent at least one tour of service working within law enforcement, and at least part of that had been concerned with overseeing civilian safety in the more dangerous and densely populated areas of the city. But that had been over a half-century ago, and the swiftness of his response—even taking into account his enhanced reaction time on this planet, which he at least had the presence of mind to temper—startled him almost as much as it obviously startled the child. They stared at each other, for less than the time it took to inhale, before a woman—likely the child's caretaker—threw her arms around the child in a relieved embrace and gave Zod the chance to walk away unnoticed.

He left the town before the sun was even visible over the rooftops, not sure if the decision that there had been enough human interaction for the day was a strategic retreat or cowardice.


	5. Chapter 5

He never did return to that particular town, but had at least found enough confidence in his ability to not kill a human through carelessness to enter the outskirts of similar human settlements whenever he spotted a restaurant menu he found interesting.

He was in one such restaurant consuming what the server—who had artificially dyed her hair bright purple, for no discernable reason—had recommended as “the best paninis in the Northwest Territories, try the tomato and mozzarella with basil, they're to die for” when his backpack started ringing. He paused with the grilled sandwich halfway to his mouth—it had never done that before. It only took him a second to realize the sound was originating from the pocket where his phone was located, so he put down his sandwich, opened the pocket, and looked at the front screen of the phone, which identified the caller as—who else—Kal-El. Well, he supposed they had not communicated for about a week, so by Kal-El's usual patterns a message was about due. Actually initiating voice instead of text transmission was unprecedented, however, and therefore somewhat worrying. He flipped it open and put it to his ear before saying, “Why are you calling me?”

There was a brief pause where no one answered. Then: “Is this... is this General Zod?” The voice on the other end was definitely not Kal-El. It was also not Lois Lane, who was the only human female whose voice Zod had heard unfiltered through his helmet, but it was still slightly familiar.

Zod frowned at his phone for a moment, trying to recall. “Who is this?”

The voice grew a little stronger, recovering slightly from the tremble it had started with. “This is Martha Kent. Clark's mother.

“I- Clark just landed in our cornfield. He's badly hurt, there's a deep cut in his back that's bleeding. I managed to drag him into the house, but there's still something in the cut that I can't get out and I wouldn't be able to close the cut even if I could and I don't- Clark's never been hurt before, and now he is, and he won't wake up-” There was a pause as she took a deep breath, then continued on in a calmer voice, “I found your number in his phone. Clark has been- he's a good man. And I know you two have been in contact.

“I don't know who else to call who could help. Will you?”

Zod closed his eyes and thought. About what could possibly manage to injure a Kryptonian, here on Earth. On what direction one would fly to get from he-didn't-even-know-where, Canada, to Smallville, Kansas. South until he recognized the destroyed grain silos, probably. “Yes. I'll be there as soon as I can.”

There was the sound of exhaling. “Oh. Oh, thank-”

He hung up before she finished—rude, yes, but Kal-El would probably forgive him under the circumstances—throwing his phone back into the backpack before tossing what he recalled of the price of the sandwich from the server's earlier sales' pitch plus some onto the table and walking out. He was only just beyond the tree line that bordered the town when he abandoned all pretense of humanity and threw himself into the sky.

Kal-El's memories of the geography surrounding his childhood home had been very clear, and Zod had made a point of paying attention the last time he had been there. This foresight probably cut about fifteen minutes off his travel time just trying to find the place, so when he landed in the backyard of Martha Kent's home it was only about ten minutes after his departure from the restaurant. She appeared at the screen door within seconds, obviously having been waiting for his arrival, though her eyes widened somewhat at the sight of him. Zod had just enough time to wonder why—was it lingering fear from their last encounter? The human-style clothing? The fact that he had come at all?—before she composed herself and gestured for him to follow her as she turned to go back into the house. “He's in the living room, on the couch. I've gotten the cape and the top of his costume off, but he's still bleed- are you alright?”

Upon entering the aforementioned living room, no, he most definitely wasn't, as a wave of vertigo forced him to grab onto the door frame to keep himself from falling on his face. He breathed, waiting for the feeling to pass. It didn't. Martha Kent was still staring at him, her already furrowed brow now even more wrinkled in concern. He waved her off and closed his eyes. Alright. This was... odd, but he had compensated for worse before.

After about half a minute, he had reoriented himself enough to be confident in his ability to walk in a straight line and headed over to the couch, then nearly fell over _again_ when the vertigo noticeably worsened, catching himself on the arm of the couch this time. This time it was accompanied by growing feeling of nausea in the pit of his stomach, either caused or exacerbated by the vertigo, but either way deep breathing was now more of a requirement rather than just a wise decision. What in the light of Rao was going on?

Martha Kent was still hovering in his peripheral vision, but he ignored her in favor of examining Kal-El where he lay on his stomach. His mother had indeed stripped him of the clothing surrounding the injury, and his breathing was shallow and erratic, his face pale. The injury itself made him frown, bemused. The laceration on his back was rather deep and long, true, and still bleeding sluggishly, but if its location and severity was anything to go by, the blood loss by itself was unlikely to have been enough to send him into shock once the adrenaline that had managed to get him to Smallville wore off.

A quick scan of the cut revealed there to be still something buried within it, as Martha Kent had said. At the injury's lowest point before tapering off, something... almost glittered. With one hand, he held the incision open a little wider, while with the other, he gripped the end of whatever-it-was protruding from Kal-El's back with his fingertips and-

He could not have been out for more than a second or two, for he regained consciousness quickly enough to catch himself before his head hit the floor. He still had the presence of mind to wave Martha Kent off again as she approached, so she stopped at the head of the couch. She looked even more worried than previous, but- “You don't feel anything, do you?” She looked confused, so he clarified. “From proximity to the… material, in your son's back.” She shook her head. He took a deep breath, and forced himself off his hands, though he stayed kneeling next to the couch for the moment, not really trusting his ability to stand. “I think... if you have some thick gloves, now would be a good time for you to retrieve them.” His voice scraped out unintentionally harsh, but she just nodded and walked off, returning less than a minute later with gloves that appeared to be made of some sort of canvas.

He put them on without further comment, then attempted once more to pull the shard of… whatever it was out of Kal-El's back. It took a lot more effort than should have probably been required, but he could not get the best grip through the gloves and was concerned about it breaking into smaller pieces before he managed to remove it. However, after about a minute of careful pulling, he had successfully extracted what he could now identify as a three-centimeter-long broken tip of a dagger—the break strangely even—made of some sort of frangible green metal. He dropped it into the bowl next to him, examined Kal-El's injury one last time for further fragments of the dagger, and before the increasing graying out of his eyesight progressed to the point he could not see, he focused his heat vision to cauterize Kal-El's wound shut.

He attributed his grace in the following moments to decades of military discipline, as he pushed himself to his feet with only a little trouble, said to Martha Kent, “You should store that somewhere far away from here,” walked out the backdoor, and only when he was standing on the porch did he fall to his knees and spend the next five minutes vomiting.

The sickness receded over time, if slowly; by the time he was done emptying his stomach of everything he had eaten over the past two days along with an unfortunate amount of bile, he no longer felt in imminent danger of fainting again, and his vision had cleared up. The slight headache and nausea remained, but lessened and far more manageable, so he stood and turned, only then realizing that Martha Kent had for at least a few seconds been watching him from the doorway. He ignored the fact that she had likely spent at least a little time watching him throw up into her bushes in favor of asking, “Where did you put it?”

She seemed more than willing to go along with this denial of the present circumstances. “In the barn, where Clark's ship used to go. He's breathing a lot better now, by the way, if you want to come inside and wait until he wakes up.”

He did and he did not; now that his own adrenaline—which had kicked in after hearing of Kal-El's injury—had worn off, his body was sending him the instructions it always had in the past when he had fallen ill: drink some water, eat something unlikely to further upset his stomach, and sleep for half a day curled up someplace warm. But such a feeling had been previously foreign on this world. Kal-El had likely never dealt with it. And while Zod was sure he would have no trouble trying to fly, it certainly did not sound appealing at the moment, so he just nodded and followed Kal-El's mother back into the house.

\--*--

There was pie. Of course.

There was also a cooked bird of some sort, mashed potatoes, green beans marinated in what smelled like garlic butter, barbequed corn, and a loaf of bread, arrayed neatly on the dining room table. Martha Kent had answered his questioning stare with a slight quirk of her lips. “It's Sunday supper. Clark always comes home on Sundays for supper.” Her smile wavered before reasserting itself on her face. “A bit cold now, but Clark will be famished when he wakes up, I'm sure. I don't know if that boy even eats when he's not home, the way he tucks into things when he is.

“Would you like anything?”

This was more than a bit surreal. He was fairly sure, based on its location, that the living room he was sitting in was the room he had thrown a truck through seven months ago, but it seemed in good repair, albeit with the wooden support beams near the ceiling of newer make than the rest of the house. And across from him, near the doorway leading into the kitchen, was the woman whose home he had ruined, whose life he had threatened, who had so vehemently cursed him and stood her ground when she had sensed a threat to her son. And she stood again before him now, asking him if he wanted anything with a small smile on her face as if none of that had ever transpired.

Perhaps Kal-El had not been speaking in jest when he had told of the depths of his mother's forgiving nature. Or maybe it was something in the air on this planet, which caused earned enmity that on other worlds would be the cause of blood feuds spanning generations to be forgotten before the hurts caused even began to heal over. “Water. Please.”

She nodded and ducked into the kitchen, returning shortly with a ceramic mug and handing it to him with another smile, far from the frazzled mother he had heard on the phone or seen upon his arrival. A hostess in her element, finally at ease. “Anything else? Clark told me you don't eat desserts or meat, but there are still plenty of vegetables and some bread, if you'd like.”

It took some effort to keep his fingers from tightening around the mug. This unforced hospitality from a woman who had every reason to loathe him was... discomfiting, to say the least. “Your son tells me I owe you an apology.”

Seeing he wasn't about to ask for food, Martha Kent walked over to another chair in the living room and sat in it with a rueful smile, though there was something dark in her eyes. “About the threats and the house, I expect. Or about what you tried to do to the world, though that would be an apology you'd owe to everyone, and most wouldn't accept it.

“An apology without actual feelings of regret is worse than none at all, in my opinion. So I suppose I would appreciate one, but only if there's something you're actually sorry about.”

Did he have any regrets?

Only that it had failed.

He had taken no pleasure in the deaths he had caused. Any remorse felt had been at what he perceived to be the necessity of an atrocity. But except for a brief moment when he last spoke to Jor-El's AI, he had never _doubted_ that necessity.

Perhaps that was his problem. Until seven months ago, when he had watched his plans literally dissolve around him, he had not once doubted his own judgment. That of the Council, of Jor-El, yes. But his own? Never.

Even now, he could feel nothing about the decisions that had led him to decide to use the world engine on Earth. However, “My destruction of your home was pointless and borne of nothing but anger seeking an outlet. For that I apologize.”

“But nothing else.”

He met her eyes evenly. “Yes.”

She shook her head slowly, still smiling, though now the expression looked slightly wistful. “Jonathan—my husband—once told me that there was nothing more dangerous than a man with a cause he believed in. I never really thought much on that until Clark told me about you.”

 _If that is true, your son is now by far the more formidable of the two of us_ , he thought but did not say.

As if he had heard mention of himself even while asleep, Kal-El chose that moment to groan, hazily open his eyes, and attempt to push himself off the couch. 'Attempt' being the operative word, as he collapsed back on his face before managing to do much more than get his hands under him. “Mom? I don't feel good. My back hurts.”

Martha Kent immediately stood up and made her way to her son's side, sitting on the sliver of couch not taken up by Kal-El and rubbing him on the back of the neck. “Oh honey...”

She seemed to have forgotten Zod's presence entirely, and Kal-El had not yet noticed it, which left him both free to observe and uncomfortable with the notion, as if he were intruding on something private, watching Martha Kent run a hand through Kal-El's hair carefully, Kal-El in return visibly relaxing, his features smoothing out and the tension leaving his shoulders. He still obviously felt the pain of his injury, but this was something else: the relief of knowing he was somewhere safe, where someone else would take care of things and make sure everything would be alright.

The exact tableau was alien to Zod; members of the military caste had not been raised in familial units. But he knew what that kind of trust felt like. What it meant, how it felt, to rise to it. What it meant, how it felt, to fall short.

He grabbed his backpack and let himself out the back door without either Martha Kent or Kal-El being the wiser, feeling rubbed raw under the surface of his skin. Sometimes, he could almost imagine what it would be like, to cast away all remnants of who he had been before coming to this planet, to live here, in the now, in its entirety. If only just the thought of it did not feel like the blatant denial of who he was, of what he had nearly done to the entirety of the human species. A betrayal of those who had senselessly died, when he had lived for no reason but chance and the misplaced mercy of the one who had most cause to hate him. If only if it did not seem disloyalty at its worst, to even contemplate forgetting Jor or Faora's face.

If only moments like this did not creep up in his blind spot and gut him.

He had been standing outside for perhaps fifteen minutes when Kal-El came out to position himself beside him. Zod did not turn to look at him, but even in his peripheral vision he could tell Kal-El had lost the glassy look to his eyes.

“My mom told me what you did. Thanks.” And to make it worse, he actually sounded grateful.

Zod ignored the gratitude as best he could. “How were you stabbed.”

“Um...” Kal-El shifted a bit as he thought. “I heard a bank robbery in progress, so I went to stop it. And—this is going to sound stupid—but there was a robot, or something. It looked like a human at first—which I didn’t even know was tech Earth _had,_ it was straight out of Asimov—but then it came right for me. When I tried to grab it, it jerked away and its skin _ripped off._ ” Kal-El shuddered at the memory. “It hit harder than a human and its reflexes were better, but not by so much it mattered, so when I heard it stumbling to its feet after I had bashed it around for a while, at least half of my attention was on making sure that it didn’t have any accomplices the police hadn’t noticed. And when it came up right next to me, I suddenly felt sick, and I lost my balance, so my back was still towards it when it stabbed me.

“I think I may have backhanded it through the wall of the bank.” Kal-El straightened. “God, I hope I didn't hurt anyone. I think the cops got all the hostages out while I was fighting the robot, but-”

“Kal-El.”

“Right. Anyway, I don't... really remember flying home. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my face on the couch and my back was one big ache.”

“How did the robot did the knife so close to you without you noticing?”

“Well, I've thought about that a bit, and I'm guessing he hid it inside his body. Probably surrounded by lead, that always throws me off. Do you know what the knife was made of? I've never felt anything like that.”

Zod shook his head. “I have never felt like that before either. However, a number of the symptoms corresponded to radiation poisoning, albeit magnified and with a much quicker onset. Your mother seemed completely unaffected by its presence, though you should watch her for a week or so to make sure.”

Kal-El blinked. “Wait, radiation that affected us but not mom? How is that- I mean, I guess it's possible that Kryptonians are susceptible to something on Earth that humans aren't, but why would it even occur to someone to make a knife out of that? Mom told me I had the broken tip in my back; something that snapped after stabbing me once doesn't sound like a great choice for a blade.”

“I don't know that either, though I suspect from the look of the break that only the end of the knife was made of that metal. The fact that it was used on you specifically meant that whoever created it suspected it would affect you somehow, however. If the robot is capable of communication and still in one piece, you should question it. If it is not, I would still requisition its memory banks for analysis.” Zod finally turned to look at Kal-El directly, though only for the purpose of scanning him once to make sure he was as healthy as he seemed before readying himself to leave.

Kal-El actually physically stopped him with a hand on one shoulder, which startled Zod enough to give Kal-El a chance to say, “Are you going already? Aren't you worried about getting sick later yourself? You should stick around for a few days.”

“Despite your mother's hospitality, I don't think any of us would be pleased about me staying here any longer.” Seeing the concern on Kal-El's face not recede, he relented slightly. “I will call you if I start to feel ill, Kal.”

Kal-El still did not look happy, but seemed at least slightly appeased, for he removed his hand from Zod's shoulder, who took the opening presented and left. Without any clear idea of where he was headed, he found himself at the Fortress soon after and finally gave into his body's demands, letting sleep take precedence as he collapsed onto the sofa without doing much more than toeing his boots off.

When he woke up, it was dark out and he hadn't bothered to turn on the generator to power the lamps, but he could still make out that there was something on the table that hadn't been there before. He stumbled over to the table rather gracelessly, still a bit lightheaded (from hunger, if nothing else), and opened the note laid on top of the wrapped pan.

_My mom said you didn't eat before you left, so here's some zucchini bread. I told her you enjoyed the pie, so we used similar spices here. Hope you like it! =)_

_~Clark_

The fact that Kal-El had drawn some kind of elementary smiling face on the note for unknown reasons threw him less than the fact that he had managed to sleep through Kal-El's arrival, approach to less than three meters from him, and subsequent departure. That... had never happened before. A combination of wariness and enhanced hearing on this planet meant he had always woken up whenever anyone or anything had gotten anywhere near him.

He must have been even more tired than he had thought.


	6. Chapter 6

After that, things rapidly deteriorated for Kal. When Kal returned to the scene of the bank robbery, the police informed him that the robot had self-destructed within a minute of Kal leaving the premises, though Kal was able to confirm the presence of bits of lead in the wreckage. What was left of the knife was in no better shape, but also contained no more of the green metal. Not terrible helpful, though worrisome in what it implied about the maker’s knowledge of Kryptonians. And neither Zod nor Kal could think of an explanation where such a metal might come from, so there was no way to guess how the robot’s creator had acquired it.

A more immediate problem was that since Superman—whose battle with the robot had been caught on film by some bystander and immediately sold to most news outlets—had proven to not be as invulnerable as initially thought, it seemed as if every criminal with extraordinary abilities decided all at once that it was the perfect time to cast themselves against Metropolis's self-appointed defender. Most of the criminals were hardly any more trouble for Kal than normal humans, but a few were strong and fast enough—or had unusual enough abilities—to at least give Kal some minor difficulty before taking them down.

The United States government had surreptitiously built a prison intended for super-powered beings in recent months—though Kal had casually mentioned to Zod that it wasn’t sufficient to hold a Kryptonian (Zod tactfully chose not to ask why he knew, though he could guess)—so at least Kal was not presented over and over again the same dilemma he had faced with Zod himself. The prison worked, mostly, and thus Kal only occasionally had to fight the same criminals, but the repeat battles were often with the strongest of them.

And then, just as things were beginning to calm down, the situation escalated again. It did not take terribly long before a number of those same reoccurring criminals took notice of each other and started working together. It was around that time Kal stopped coming back to the Fortress pleasantly tired and started staggering in exhausted.

In the months following, more and more of Kal's time at the Fortress was spent sprawled on the sofa in sleeps so deep they bordered on comatose. Never actually injured again, not even a bruise, so Zod wrote up the incident with the robot and the knife as anomalous and kept his peace.

Kal staggering into the Fortress one evening with a broken nose and a request for Zod to reset it was what made the necessity of a change impossible to ignore, though he took the time to viciously jerk Kal's nose back into place before saying, “How did they finally manage to hurt you?”

Kal winced and touched his nose gingerly before he replied, “Actually, I think this was fairly lucky. Diana was actually trying to stop the robber; I just misunderstood and she got in few good punches before we sorted it out.”

“'Diana?'”

“Yeah. Turns out that there's a hidden island in the Mediterranean populated by amazons. They've recently noticed all the weird stuff happening lately in the wider world and sent Diana to look into it. Diana saw a robbery in progress and stepped in; I saw her holding a guy against a wall and, well...” Kal rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, “I also... stepped in.

“Turns out that not only are the amazons a warrior culture, they're also a heck of a lot stronger than normal humans. If they're humans at all; that was never really clarified. Hence the broken nose, I guess. But we worked it out before anything too bad happened.” Kal grinned again, but that didn't do anything to cover up his yawn or hide the circles under his eyes; Zod wasn't sure whether they were remnants of healing black eyes from the nose break or just a sign of his growing weariness, and the fact that the answer was probably 'both' was galling.

“If a broken nose was the only result of several direct hits to your face, this Diana was still significantly weaker then you. You have been repeatedly worn down by opponents who should be no match for you, which is not helped by your non-lethal methods while they are certainly not extending you the same courtesy. She should not have been able to touch you, but even now you move like you have not slept. You have allowed yourself to become overtaxed, and-” A thought occurred.

“Have you ever actually been given any combat training?”

“No.” Kal yawned again. “My parents discouraged me from fighting growing up, for obvious reasons. Besides, who could possibly train me?”

Zod closed his eyes and sighed; there was an unfortunately obvious answer to that. He tried to stave off giving it by saying, “This Diana, for one.”

“She's already gone; she's headed off to Washington DC to talk to the President before going on to New York. She mentioned being willing to help with world-spanning threats in the future, but otherwise she's planning on being busy representing her people's interests in the UN.”

Well, that was pretty much it then. Zod stood up. “Come outside.”

Kal blinked, but followed him unquestioningly until they stood outside the cloak's perimeter. “What-?”

Zod didn't let him finish. “You wish to protect this planet, yes?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then you have made two obvious mistakes. One, you have not sought to seriously ally yourself with other individuals who could not only assist you against your enemies which actually pose a threat, but also be where you cannot. These criminals you fight have already started to do so, so it would be only good sense for you to do so in turn. Diana sounds like a start, but I know you have spoken to the defender of Central City at least once and had nothing come of it even though both of you can move at speeds which means help could be imminent if requested. Two, despite being presented numerous times with the fact that the reason most of these individuals are even a vague irritant is due to lateral thinking, extreme forward planning, or because they have combat training, you have not sought to correct your deficiencies.”

Kal nodded. “I've actually had some thoughts on the allies thing—there's a guy in Gotham I'd like to get into contact with soon—but...” His mouth crooked. “I take it you have some ideas fixing my 'deficiencies.'”

Which was when Zod re-broke his nose.

\--*--

Losing muscle mass on Earth had not been a problem; no matter what he seemed to do, his body did not change much. It was still invigorating to stretch old muscles after nearly a year of relative inactivity, even if it was in the context of teaching.

The initial punch had just been to make a point, and to be completely honest with himself, Zod was surprised when it landed. His recollections of his physical encounters with Kal had Zod being the weaker and slower of the two of them, and the degree by which long exposure to Earth's yellow sun and atmosphere had caused that discrepancy to shrink—that is, to nothing at all—had been unexpected.

He had still pulled the blow, because that was one did in a training exercise, which was good because he still managed to further black both of Kal's eyes. He managed to cover his shock as Kal staggered back—how had Kal not seen it coming?—by rolling his shoulders and flexing his hands. His left—the one that had struck Kal in the face—didn't even ache.

Kal, meanwhile, was cursing and holding both hands up to his now-bloodied nose. “Son of a-! You could have told me you were going to do that!”

“You're leaving your stomach unguarded,” Zod stated blandly, which caused Kal to hastily lower his hands. He still wasn't in anything like a hand-to-hand combat stance, and Zod had to resist the urge to sigh. “Do you at least know how to make a fist.”

Kal glared, his nose still dripping. “Yes. Thumb outside so you don't break it. Do you actually know anything about teaching people how to fight?”

“I taught a few units of close combat at the military academy. Admittedly my specialty was melee weaponry, but as the best Kryptonian hand-to-hand combatant of our era died last year, you will have to make due with me. Fortunately,” Zod said dryly as he gave an obvious study of Kal’s posture, “Two of the hand-to-hand units I did teach were to the first-year class, so I am at least capable of grounding you in the basics.”

Sparring with Faora had always been a good way to reacquaint himself with humility. She had also been of the school of teaching that involved hitting someone until they learned to block, which probably wasn't the best tack to take here, something quickly proven by Kal retorting hotly, “Did you break their noses too?”

“They were five.” Seeing Kal did not look convinced of Zod's hesitation to injure small children, Zod continued with, “They also had twenty years of courses to look forward to before seeing actual combat. With the track record of violent escalation you have encountered thus far, you have at best a few weeks until you face someone or some group that might actually pose some danger to you, so we're going to have to speed up the time table a bit as well as skip everything not immediately relevant.

“Now watch my shoulders. How they move should tell you when I'm about to try to punch you again.”

\--*--

It seemed to help, in the sense that Kal started coming back to the Fortress pleasantly tired again and only progressed to exhausted after Zod spent two hours correcting his form (which reverted to being terrible when he wasn’t paying attention; Kal seemed at least subconsciously convinced that no one would ever aim for his legs). It didn’t ameliorate the fact that Kal’s opponents uniformly seemed to be more vicious than him, cleverer than him, or both, or that Kal by virtue of his self-imposed role was almost entirely reactionary and thus did not have his enemies’ time to plan, but it was better than nothing.

Kal seemed to agree, if only implicitly by the fact he never actually complained when Zod had him throw the same punch several hundred times in a row. Sighed childishly, on days that had otherwise been frustrating. Insisted he at least be able to eat a banana before they get started, on the occasions he had skipped dinner. But even during the first week when Zod insisted they spend all of Kal’s spare time practicing the most basic strikes and defensive form so he would at least have a little muscle memory to work with, Kal would push through even when he obviously wanted to do nothing more than fall over and sleep for twelve hours.

That was decently impressive, for one who was never meant to be a soldier. Zod had nothing to complain about regarding Kal’s diligence.

Which still left him everything else.

Even after a month, Zod was still convinced that back on Krypton Kal would have been destroyed by an enterprising eighth-year going for the throat, having a discrepancy of a third of a meter in height and fifty kilograms in weight or no. Kal wasn’t a natural. When he was on point his defense was… acceptable, but he had spent so long flinching away from the idea of hurting someone else that all of his attacks actually directed at a person held some hesitation. The hesitation made him slow, and the flinching made him predictable.

So Kal couldn’t hit Zod. Ever. Even when Zod stood non-defensively and just let Kal take swings at him, there was always time to dodge or get a forearm or hand in the way to diminish any possible damage to nothing.

It was frustrating. Had this hesitation been present when they had fought in Smallville? He didn’t think so, but he had also not really been able to see Kal move then. Now every punch and attempted tackle seemed ridiculously telegraphed.

He observed one or two of Kal’s fights in Metropolis from a distance, just to check whether Kal was one of those who performed better in an actual battle. He wasn’t. It was just that against the caliber of opponent Kal usually faced, it didn’t matter. Most of them could hardly see him, and even with Kal using only a fraction of his actual strength, all but a select would fold under one or two attacks, and those were rarely the ones fast on their feet.

It wasn’t that caliber of enemy Zod was concerned with; but then, at least since Zod himself, Kal had never faced an enemy where there was any actual risk. After all, in order for there to be risk, there had to be some chance, no matter how minute, that Kal could lose. And Kal didn’t lose. Occasionally took some time to figure out his enemy’s plan, perhaps, but Kal himself was never in any real danger, and rarely so was anyone else once Kal showed up.

Trying to figure out how to manufacture the kind of situation where Kal would actually feel it necessary to use the full extent of his powers was… well, not difficult, but always began with Zod at least threatening to break the treaty he had signed with the United States government, which he wasn’t willing to do just to stage a training scenario.

The best compromise he came up with was one day about six weeks out from the day Kal came back with a broken nose (long since gone; apparently any injuries they _did_ manage to sustain healed at an accelerated rate on top of all the other powers Earth granted them). It started with Zod backhanding Kal across the face.

They were in the middle of sparring, but Zod wasn’t surprised to see Kal looking shocked. Past the first training day, Zod had never struck out at Kal with the actual intent of hitting him. He had always just been testing Kal’s defenses. Holding back, just as Kal did, but unlike Kal, Zod had nearly eighty years of training and experience and instinct telling him to hit as hard and as fast as he could. He had been only slightly above average height for a man in the military caste back on Krypton; compared to Nam-Ek, or even Tor-An, his strength had been unexceptional. It was far more unnatural for him to hold back than not.

Which was not to say he didn’t know how; training was _meant_ to be nonlethal, and preferably without any injuries of note. And he had a better sense of his own strength now than when he had re-broken Kal’s nose six weeks prior, which was why despite the initial speed of the blow, his backhand was properly calibrated to stop short of fracturing Kal’s cheekbone.

Which isn’t to say it wasn’t meant to hurt. A lot.

“Ow!” It was at this point that Zod learned that Kal would drop his defensive stance to examine a new injury, and it was about a second later that Kal learned that Zod would take advantage of that to step in and elbow Kal sharply in the solar plexus. When Kal (predictably) doubled over, Zod took that opportunity to punch Kal with the heel of his hand between the shoulder blades, knocking Kal to his knees.

Looking down at Kal, Zod said coldly, “You know that all three of those attacks should have been ineffective. Backhands are too telegraphed to usually be useful in a fight, elbows are very short range, and my heel strike wasn’t aimed anywhere vulnerable. So why are you on the ground moaning?”

Kal didn’t immediately reply, so Zod kicked him in the stomach. Which was when he was abruptly reminded that just because he could now judge his own strength correctly in relation to Kal’s didn’t mean he was used to the sheer force he could now exert, as that was when Kal was knocked back into—and through—a nearby rock formation.

Zod took a moment to blink—stupid of him, just because Kal’s body could take the force of a blow didn’t mean it wouldn’t move him if he wasn’t properly braced—before Kal came flying out of the rubble and tried to punch him in the nose. ‘Tried’ being the operative word, because for all that the blow held less hesitation than usual (good), Kal had still been flying on a straight trajectory, giving Zod plenty of time to brace himself (as Kal had not), tilt his head to the right to avoid the punch, then grab Kal by the waist as he flew by, pulling him down as Zod’s knee went up. This had the desired result of Kal in the dirt again, curled up on his side and holding his stomach.

This time, Zod took a step back and gave him a minute to breathe. Kal took advantage of about half that time to do just that before hissing, “Why are you trying to get me to vomit?”

“I’m not.”

Kal rolled over onto his back, switching from gasping to taking slow, deep breaths that seemed—based on his facial expression—dedicated to staving off nausea. After another half a minute, Kal breathed, “Are you just trying to prove you can beat me up? ‘Cause I promise I’m convinced. Taking relatively equal acclimatization to Earth into account, you are better than me in a fight. By a lot. You win.”

Then he _grinned_. For a long moment, Zod could only stare. Then he stepped in and stomped on Kal’s ribs.

 _That_ , at least, wiped the smile from Kal’s face. “ _Son of a_ \- stop hitting me! I give up, geez!”

In answer, Zod ground his foot in a little more, which gained him the last of Kal’s attention. Once he was sure he had all of it, Zod said, quietly, “Is _that_ what you’ll say when you’re finally faced with an enemy stronger than you? Who has come to destroy your beloved Metropolis? Is that,” and it was here he growled harshly, making Kal’s eyes grow wide, “What you would have said to me before I returned to your farm? To your _mother_ , to finish what I st-”

Like much of what Kal had done during their training, the heat vision was predictable, but at least it was welcome, a sign that Kal _could_ go for the throat like the battle actually mattered. But as he _had_ seen it coming even before Kal’s eyes started glowing red, Zod dodged easily, though he wondered from how far away the red beam going straight into the sky could be seen.

It lasted a few seconds before it petered out, Kal obviously struggling to get ahold of his emotions before staggering to his feet. He took a deep breath before saying evenly, “Don’t threaten my mother.”

Zod didn’t let his expression shift. “Make me.”

It was still a clumsy punch—Kal’s shoulder tightened perceptibly before he threw it—but _meant_ , intended to do damage. Zod actually had to put in some effort to block, but he still twisted his mouth into a sneer at the attempt. “I would have moved on to your beloved Lois Lane next. Couldn’t have someone that clever alive, knowing about Kryptonians as she does. She would-”

More than one punch, this time. An actual pattern of attack, Kal’s right jab aiming for where he knew his left hook would cause Zod to weave. Zod felt an actual moment of honest pride as the barely-avoided jab painfully glanced off his ear before taking advantage of the gaping holes left open in Kal’s defense in his pursuit of an all-out assault by kneeing him in the stomach again.

This time, Kal wasn’t quite able to keep himself from vomiting, but Zod let him do so in peace, not bothering to follow up as he might otherwise have while he watched Kal fall to his knees for the second time in as many minutes.

Zod braced himself when Kal rose to his feet a minute later, but it was for nothing; all anger was gone from Kal’s eyes, something else in its place. He was even grinning again, though now it was more of a twitch at the corner of his mouth instead of the wide, rueful smile from before. “You’re that worried about me.”

“You’re soft, and someday it will kill you,” Zod said shortly. “But that doesn’t bother you. So keep in mind what _would_.”

Kal didn’t bother to keep his grin from spreading over his face, though the growing bruise on his left cheek must have meant it stung. “I appreciate the thought, but I think you worry too much. Besides Diana rallying the amazons to destroy me—which I’ll admit would be a bit of a betrayal after all the coffee I’ve bought her—what on Earth could kill me?”

At that, Zod had to chuckle. When Kal looked at him questioningly, he said, “What makes you think it’s anything on _Earth_ I’m concerned with?”

\--*--

But perhaps he was worrying too much. It turned out his prediction of Kal getting hurt again in the near future was overly pessimistic, at least, so Zod was idly considering how much of an aberration Diana (and her people) could be considered in terms of threats this planet could present against Kal, or even in general—it wasn’t exactly _likely_ an alien civilization would ever concern itself with Earth; the planet was borderline primeval at best—when Kal walked in on him having lunch.

This would not have been unusual were he dining at the Fortress. He wasn’t dining at the Fortress, which was why Zod—sitting in his favorite restaurant on the outskirts of Calgary—was surprised that Kal (a) knew where he was, and (b) was willing to approach him. They had never interacted anywhere which even might be considered public.

“How did you find me?”

Kal—or perhaps he should say Clark, seeing as he was, for whatever reason, still dressed in his impractical _Daily Planet_ formal-ware—sat down heavily in the chair on the opposite side of the table before answering, “An active Kryptonian has a slightly slower heartbeat than a human in a coma. It makes it pretty easy to track you down. What are you eating?”

Zod chose to put off wondering how Kal managed to hyper-focus quite that much, even though he himself could barely hear Kal’s heartbeat when they were sitting less than a meter apart (at least, not if he didn’t want to hear everything else going on in a kilometer radius). “The Tuesday special. Shouldn’t you be at the _Planet_?”

Kal-as-Clark frowned, his expression twisting into something Zod might describe as petulant were Kal any younger. “Yeah. Lois made me take some time off. Said I’d get in the way today.” He twisted to see the special board hanging on the far wall, blinked, then turned back deliberately to actually look into Zod's bowl instead of just glancing at it. Zod couldn’t decide if the resulting widening of his eyes was in disbelief or horror.

“Is this… a vegan restaurant?”

Zod followed Kal’s gaze into his bowl before deliberately stabbing into his avocado and black bean salad with lemon vinaigrette and taking a bite. It was, as expected, delicious. Most of what they served here was. “Probably. Most of the places I find acceptable tend to be.”

Kal’s eyes narrowed, all assumed affability from his Clark Kent persona fading in the light of the magnitude of this affront. “I’ve _seen_ you eat dairy. And baked goods with eggs in them.”

Zod was saved from having to reply by the arrival of the waiter—a young man by the name of Lian—who, being as professional as always, already had a menu and a glass of water on hand to give to Kal along with his customary pleasant smile. “I apologize, Mr. Sobol. I did not know someone would be joining you.” He set down the menu and the glass before nodding to Kal.

“I didn’t know Clark would be coming. And he is in no hurry.”

At a look from Zod, Kal nodded along with a sheepish grin. “I think I’d just like some coffee, anyway. With sugar and milk, please.” At that, Lian nodded back agreeably and walked off.

Kal waited until Lian was outside (human) hearing range before saying, “Our waiter at minimum has ten piercings. And six tattoos. This has got to be the most hippy-ish restaurant I have ever been in. Or is it hipster? I’ll admit I’m not exactly sure how that goes.”

Zod took a sip of his tea. “Nine tattoos. He has gotten one every year during some holiday called the spring festival since he turned eighteen. He plans on stopping when he has twelve.”

“Why...?”

“Something to do with his culture’s calendar. I am not exactly sure.”

“No, why do you know that- you’ve been here before. You’ve _talked_ with that guy.”

Zod raised an eyebrow at the badly disguised glee in Kal’s voice. “This is the sixth time I’ve been here, yes. And Lian is the only day-shift waiter on weekdays.”

“You know his _name_.”

Zod squinted slightly in Kal’s direction. “Did Ms. Lane send you off because you had taken a blow to the head?” A quick scan didn’t reveal any obvious trauma, but Zod’s medical training had been basic at best.

“No, it’s just…” Kal trailed off as Lian came back with the coffee, sugar, and milk, answering Lian’s inquiry about the menu with, “No food thanks, I’ve got to head out soon.”

Zod watched as Kal switched his focus to pouring the sugar and milk into his coffee, stirring, then taking a careful sip which started blissful before shifting to resigned. “Something troubling you?”

“This is soy milk, isn’t it.”

“This is a vegan restaurant.”

“I know, I was just wishing for miracles.” Kal sighed. “At least the coffee’s better the _Planet’s_.”

It was then that Kal seemed to recall where the conversation had been interrupted. “I just think it’s nice you know so much about him. I mean, you don’t exactly think highly of humans.”

Based on the hope resplendent in Kal’s expression, it was obvious he was reading far too much into this. “Names are simple to remember. And I know about as much as would usually be garnered by five minutes of conversation.” He narrowed his eyes at Kal. “I am not entirely unversed in pleasantries.”

“I know that-”

“Why did Ms. Lane send you away, then?”

At that, Kal snorted, though there was some humor still present around the corners of his mouth. “You just don’t use them with me, right? But, uh…” He frowned slightly. “We’ve been looking into some reports that have hinted at some sketchy looking experimentation going on. Testing on live subjects, stuff like that. Whatever it is seems likely to involve some major human rights violations. Doesn’t have the most reassuring code name, either. I helped with the groundwork, but right now Lois is talking with some of the people I dealt with when I first came out as Superman.”

“Such as General Swanwick.”

“Yes. I think she was afraid I’d be recognized.”

“Who could possibly ever see through your brilliant disguise.”

Kal stared at Zod’s neutral expression for a long second before chuckling under his breath. “God, people must have had a hell of time figuring out when you were kidding.”

“They didn’t try.” Largely because everyone had used Faora as a gauge on his mood. If she laughed, it was safe to laugh. If she didn’t, no one dared.

“Not even my dad?”

Halfway through swallowing another bite of salad, Zod rolled his eyes. “Your father was not one to laugh because someone made a joke.”

Kal’s grin slipped a little at the corner of his mouth. “You make him sound more serious than he comes across in your stories.”

“You misunderstand my meaning. Jor laughed at things he found amusing. This just rarely coincided with actual attempts at wit.” Jor-El had been largely somber in social and professional situations as befit the heir of the House of El, but that had only persisted until his grandmother’s body was cool. The deference Jor was due after that as the leader of the science caste meant that there was no one besides the Council that he had to be polite to anymore, strictly speaking. And Jor, for all his good qualities, had always been a bit of an ass.

Which meant that he occasionally burst out laughing even when the rest of the room was practically vibrating from stress. It didn’t even have to have a source beyond the vagaries of his own thoughts. It had been Rao-damned irritating along with being occasionally insulting, and not only to Zod (or even mostly to him). If Jor had not been so good at infecting people with his own good humor, he probably would have been assassinated in the five years between his own ascension and Zod’s, which was the point at which Zod could reliably ensure that Jor was under (very discreet) guard at all times. The man had been born with all the self-preservation instincts of a quarn. It had been amazing that he… that-

Damn it. And he had dealt so well with the thought of Faora.

Zod took a bite of his salad and studiously chewed it for a time. Swallowing hurt, but at this point he expected it.

“Sobol?”

Zod ignored Kal in favor of another bite of avocado.

“Sobol… are you okay?

“Uh… Dru?”

The fork deformed in Zod’s grip. The stare he leveled at Kal-El must have been murderous, because Kal-El actually pressed against the back of his seat in what seemed to be an unconscious flinch. Well. At least his expression was adequately expressing how he felt. “Don’t. _Call me that_.”

Kal-El raised his hands in the universal gesture for surrender. “Okay. Okay, I won’t. Just- calm down.” He glanced around the restaurant surreptitiously (it was, as expected at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday, empty; there was a reason Zod ate an early lunch) before hissing, “Your _eyes_ are glowing.”

At that, Zod closed his eyes and immediately forced himself to take a deep breath, though the fork further twisted in his hand. When he opened them again, he said calmly, “I do not give you permission to call me by my given name.”

Kal-El still looked startled, though he managed to croak out, “I didn’t realize you were so sensitive about a shortening of your fake human name.” When Zod just stared at him, Kal-El took the time to reassess what he just said and remember something obvious. “… which is also your real given name. Which I’ve forgotten until now. Because I’m an idiot. And I’m sorry, because that’s probably very personal. Or there’s some cultural element I’m missing, because you call me Kal sometimes and it’s just now occurred to me that there might be some meaning to that-”

A ringtone emanating from Kal’s jacket pocket thankfully interrupted his ramblings before it could get any worse. He halted himself with a pained, sheepish grin before carefully fumbling his phone out of his pocket and flipping it open. “Hey, Lois…”

It probably would have been a very confusing conversation if listened to one-sided, but even with his hearing carefully suppressed, Zod could clearly hear Ms. Lane on the other end as she said in what was a suspiciously even tone, “I know I told you that you couldn’t come, Clark, but at the moment I would incredibly appreciate it if a mutual acquaintance could make an appearance at the military installation we talked about earlier today. Preferably in whatever he has resembling a stealth mode, because I don’t think it’s safe for Superman here right now.”

“Um… okay. Why would that be?”

At that, all semblance of professionalism left Ms. Lane’s tone. “Because these motherfucking assholes think they’re _ready_ for him. And they’re not, because they have absolutely no idea what they’re dealing with.”

At that, Kal straightened in his chair, and his eyes focused in a way that Zod hadn’t seen in over a year. “I’m glad you’re so confident in- him, but why would the military need to get ready for him? He helps people. He’s no threat.”

“ _He’s_ not, but Superman’s never been the problem. Just get him over here to sneak me out of the closet I’m currently hiding in, and you can look over the Project Doomsday files as much as you-”

From Ms. Lane’s end of the line came the distinct sound of screaming. Screaming which was abruptly cut off.

Kal’s eyes widened alarmingly. “Lois?!”

“Not me.” But Ms. Lane’s voice had still audibly tightened. “I think they’ve fucked up even more than I thought. I’m in basement level one. Get moving, Clark.”

Kal was out the door before Zod could hear any more of their conversation.

A moment later, Lian’s bewildered facing popped out from the kitchen, obviously in reaction to Kal’s shout of worry. Zod just shrugged and discreetly straightened out the fork under the table. “He had some business to attend to.”

For a brief moment, he was tempted to follow. But Kal had proven it true that there was nothing on Earth that could harm him. Many had tried, a great deal of whom were the result of genetic experimentation like that which Ms. Lane was currently investigating. Few had succeeded, and all of them by the element of surprise. Kal knew he was going into danger now. He would be fine.

And, as shown fifteen minutes later by a text appearing on Zod’s phone— _sorry about coffee, will pay u back_ (ridiculous, as if Kal’s money wasn’t the basis of all the stock investments from which he now paid for everything)—he was.

It was just that the situation soon after that grew worse very, very quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be the last chapter for at least a few days, as I am now out of pre-written material.
> 
> Feel free to point out any typos, by the way, or even just really awkwardly constructed sentences.


	7. Chapter 7

Zod did not consider himself particularly attuned to Kal. He had not known until Kal’s mother called him that Kal had been stabbed. He had no notice of Kal’s fight with Diana until Kal had shown up at the Fortress with a broken nose. He had not thought this unusual; Kryptonians as a species were not naturally telepathic or empathic, and his mastery of his enhanced senses could at his most charitable be described as a work in progress. He was not yet at the point (if he ever would be) where he could realistically monitor Kal without devoting all his attention to it and being no further away than a few dozen kilometers, and even then he had to start knowing where Kal was. Today he did not know. He had not looked. Why would he?

He was back at the Fortress by the afternoon of the day Lois Lane called Kal for a pickup from the laboratory she had been looking into. While she had not yet written an article about what she had found, there was a headline in that evening’s edition of the online _Daily Planet_ about a government military lab being reduced to rubble about a hundred kilometers outside Metropolis. The government had yet to give a statement about the cause of the destruction or even the original purpose of the lab, and the article had no mention of Lois Lane or Superman being involved.

Fifteen minutes later, Zod had moved on to the business section and wasn’t even thinking about Kal. There was no reason to. Kal would be fine. Kal always was. He would help Lois Lane finish up their investigation into whatever the United States’ government was hiding, possibly have to take some extra time to deal with whatever they had created, and the byline about the military’s project and Superman’s heroics would be on the front page of the _Daily Planet’s_ morning edition within the next few days. That was how it had always gone.

He had not been thinking about Kal. He had, in fact, been idly considering buying a few dozen more Facebook shares considering the success of Instagram’s recent advertising push, when he suddenly found himself doubled over in his chair with his hands clapped over his ears in a futile, desperate attempt to block out the screaming. Screaming which, even more abruptly, even more terrifyingly than it began… stopped.

Zod had never before heard Kal cry out in pain. But who else could it be?

\--*--

Zod had some months prior discovered it was much faster (and less noticeable) to fly high enough that there was no air to provide wind resistance. This was the first time he had thought it necessary to utilize that trick, which was why he managed to find himself above Metropolis in less than five minutes instead of the usual fifteen or so. It was there that he ran into trouble. Past ‘in the general direction of Metropolis,’ he had no idea where the scream had originated from, and even hovering a kilometer up, he could see no signs of active conflict which could clue him in to Kal’s most likely location. The idea of listening for a slowed heartbeat as Kal had done to find him in Calgary was quickly given up as a farce when it garnered him nothing but a piercing headache within less than a minute. More practically, Kal was not answering his phone.

There were, however, a number of police cars, fire engines, and ambulances present at or heading towards the northernmost edge of the city, so that was where he headed for lack of a better idea, noticing as he decreased in altitude more than a few buildings that had obviously been laid waste to quite recently, and as he got closer the sounds of screaming (not Kal’s this time) and general havoc.

He made sure to land a few blocks away from the center of activity, in a deserted alleyway where none of the street lights touched, before he made his way over to the periphery of one of the largest masses of people where a police officer was trying to direct everyone away from the center of destruction and started looking around. If there was one thing he had learned from talking to Kal, it was that the easiest way to spot a reporter was to find someone in civilian garb who wasn’t running in a sensible direction.

And… there. A red-haired man attempting to speak to the police officer between the waves of panicked humans, phone in hand. The police officer, for her part, looked harried and like she wished the reporter was otherwise engaged, so Zod decided to oblige. “Excuse me.”

The reporter turned to him after giving the police officer a pout, though his eyes were bright in what seemed an unhealthy reaction for a civilian during a crisis. “Yes?”

Zod considered and discarded half a dozen cover stories before realizing he did not need to bother; for humans, curiosity alone was considered enough to be motivation for questioning. “What happened here?”

The grin that darted across the reporter’s face seemed equally unsettling, considering even from here the screams of the injured could be heard. “A monster.” He glanced at the police officer before taking a few steps closer to Zod and lowering his voice, his voice wavering slightly in his eagerness to share. This close, it was obvious the reporter was young, little more than an adolescent even by human standards. No wonder he seemed more excited than afraid. “Didn’t see it myself, but we have witnesses that talk of a gray-skinned creature twice as tall and wide as a person. It showed up out of nowhere, some say dropped out of the sky. Destroyed nearly two blocks before Superman showed up and dragged it outside the city.” Only then did the reporter’s mouth twist into a frown. “That was over ten minutes ago, though. No one’s seen Superman since. He’s never taken this much time with one of those meta-freaks before when he had them in his sights. Not sure what’s taking him so long.”

It was then, almost perfectly on cue, that Zod’s phone started to ring. He quickly nodded his thanks to the reporter before stepping off into a side alley and pulling his phone out of his bag. “Kal.” He refused to let it sound like a question.

Not that Kal likely would have noticed. Even through the static of a poor connection, Zod could hear the distant cast of Kal’s voice that likely heralded a concussion. “Zod… I’m sorry… to ask, but could you come… meet me?”

“Where are you?”

“Um…” Kal’s smothered laugh sounded more than slightly hysterical. “In… the dirt?”

Unfortunately, even knowing Kal was alive and conscious was no help in tracking him down.

Well, not with enhanced senses, at any rate. Fortunately, there was at least one edge he had over Kal when it came to living on Earth: he actually bothered to read the owner’s manual of everything he used, and both he and Kal had recently gotten phone upgrades. “Never mind. Give me your iPhone log in information. I’ll track you via satellite.”

\--*--

As it turned out, Kal was less than a minute’s flight outside of Metropolis, but it took closer to five because Kal told him to fly as high as possible before descending on Kal’s position. The worry in Kal’s voice stopped Zod from disregarding this instruction out of hand, and when he began to hear screaming again as soon as he reentered Earth’s atmosphere—nearly as piercing as the sound that had drawn him to Metropolis to begin with, but distinctly deeper—he was glad he did, as even covering his ears couldn’t entirely stop his wince. A wince which briefly tightened upon getting a first glimpse of Kal, though he had smoothed it out into his usual frown by the time Kal heard his approach.

He had less control over his senses than his expression, unfortunately, as his vision briefly unfocused and he gained a thorough, headache-inducing look at Kal’s skeletal structure and musculature, which looked about as intact as his exterior. “The ulna in your right forearm is broken near the wrist, your right elbow is shattered, and the three lowest ribs on your right side are cracked.”

Kal looked up at him blearily from where he sat in the dirt. Zod crouched down to get a look at Kal’s eyes, which upon closer examination were definitely not focusing properly. There was also a puddle of vomit less than a meter to his left; Zod could actually see remnants of Kal’s earlier coffee in it. Which pointed to one quite obvious conclusion. “You also have a concussion.”

“That… makes sense. I’m pretty sure I was out for at least a few minutes.”

“How many times were you struck?”

“Twice.” Kal actually managed a wry grin. “I think, technically, both times I hit myself. The punch that broke my arm slapped down my hand into my face, and the other punch drove my elbow into my side. I… think.” He turned his head carefully, looking around. “This… isn’t where we were fighting. The second punch might have knocked me pretty far.”

Zod started hearing screaming again. Now that he was expecting it, he could pinpoint it coming from between their location and Metropolis, and despite the strength of it, it still sounded at least a few kilometers’ distant. Pretty far, indeed—too far at ground level to see the source when taking into account the curvature of the planet—and far enough to have apparently caused Kal’s opponent to lose track of him. Which meant Zod himself still did not know “Who were you fighting? Who did this to you?”

Kal blinked, his eyes wavering again. “I don’t… he was big. Ten feet tall, maybe bigger. Gray, scaly skin. Red eyes.” Which matched the description the reporter had given Zod.

But that didn’t explain much. “Just one creature.”

“I swear I blocked.”

“I know.” The pattern of damage backed that up, which was worrying in of itself. Still, “If you had not, you would likely be dead.

“Did you recognize it?”

Kal shook his head, then looked as if he regretted it. “No, but I think I know where he came from.”

It took less than a second for Zod to infer what Kal was implying. Of course. It was too big of a coincidence otherwise. “Those secret government files Ms. Lane was looking into?”

Kal started and then quickly aborted a nod, remembering just in time the damage to his head. “Project Doomsday, yeah. But even from the paperwork Lois let me skim, I had no idea they were doing something like…” he trailed off.

Zod only had the patience to wait a few seconds for Kal to continue before he snapped, “Like what?”

“I got one good hit in. He gave a little bit; he isn’t totally invulnerable.” Zod stayed quiet at this; his own definition of ‘invulnerable’ had changed a great deal since he had come to Earth, and Kal still had not answered his question. “But whatever damage I may have given him healed before he even seemed to feel it.” As Kal went on, his voice grew quiet, “But that wouldn’t even be so bad, except. I tried to talk to him, to ask him why it had attacked Metropolis, but I’ve gotten more of a reaction from a cow. And… his eyes were…” He glanced at Zod. “Is it possible for someone to be so angry that they don’t even have a mind anymore?”

Zod cared less about that than about the fact that “The United States government created this creature, something as strong as or stronger than a Kryptonian empowered by Earth’s atmosphere and this solar system’s sun. Nothing else has even been close.”

Kal’s mouth thinned. “And then they let him get out, and he went after Metropolis.

“I wish I knew more. Lois was still looking into the project’s details when I got the alert about Metropolis. Last I checked, she was calling in some favors to talk to people, but that was less than half an hour ago, and I don’t think-”

Kal’s phone, sitting forgotten on top of his left knee, began ringing as if on cue, _Lois Lane_ featuring prominently on the screen. Kal stared down at his phone for a moment in bemusement before snorting and muttering under his breath, “That’s what I get for underestimating Lois,” before picking up the phone and touching the answer button. “Hey, Lois…”

“Hey, Superman,” came Lois Lane’s voice from the other end, artificially cheerful. “Do you remember our old friend, General Swanwick? Say hello, general.”

A man’s voice, unfamiliar to Zod, issued from the phone, the tone short. “Superman.”

Kal blinked. “General.”

“Turns out,” Ms. Lane continued, still cheerful, though with a growing edge that was impossible to miss, “That General Swanwick was heading up Project Doomsday! I always kind of suspected, considering the reason for the project’s existence, but my sources were able to confirm it and get me a quick appointment with the general.” The cheerful overlay dropped entirely from Ms. Lane’s voice, leaving only the edge. “Good thing, too, considering that said project has completely escaped the general’s control and made Metropolis a target. Nearly a thousand dead, and over twice that injured, in less than two minutes. Over a hundred million dollars in property damage, on top of that. Hard to think of how bad it would have gotten had you not intervened. Not nearly up to the Invasion’s level, but then, they had a lot longer, and it wasn’t _goddamned self-inflicted_.”

“I’m _aware_ of the magnitude of the problem, Ms. Lane. Superman: Have you neutralized the threat?”

“No.”

“ _Will_ you, this time?”

Kal’s eyes narrowed. “General, I wouldn’t take that tone with me, if I were you. If I had found out about Project Doomsday earlier, I would have stopped it. It was a bad idea to begin with.”

“I’m asking you to stop it now.”

“No, you’re asking me to _kill_ -”

“You haven’t even heard the best part,” interrupted Lois Lane’s voice, again eerily cheerful. “Despite the best efforts of the world’s various governments and richest companies, it became pretty obvious to the U.S. government some time ago that no amount of technology or genetic engineering could match a Kryptonian. Except one thing.”

At this, General Swanwick’s steady voice rose noticeably in alarm. “Ms. Lane-”

“Another Kryptonian.”

Zod was not even aware he had spoken his thoughts aloud until Kal turned to look at him, and General Swanwick and Ms. Lane’s voices on the other end of the line fell silent. Not for long; only a few seconds passed before Ms. Lane’s voice again issued from the phone, this time deliberately, painstakingly even. “Superman, who is with you right now?”

Kal made no sign he had heard Ms. Lane speak, still looking at Zod. Zod looked back, his mind curiously blank, except for one clear, distinct though. “Kal: At what point did the United States’ government have a chance to get ahold of some of your genetic material?”

Kal’s face was, for a moment, uncomprehending; then, his eyes widened, and the phone dropped away from his ear. “They had me in their custody for a few hours before you sent Faora to come get me. I didn’t let them take any samples, but-”

“Hair follicles,” Zod concluded, everything still seeming oddly distant. “Kryptonians shed them naturally just as humans do.

“More than enough genetic material for cloning. But with primitive human technology, unused to Kryptonian biology and with their genetics research still in its nascent stages, it would never be perfect. But they wouldn’t need a perfect genetic replica; they would just need a weapon they could aim.”

He leaned down and plucked Kal’s phone from his unresisting fingers, putting it up to his own ear. “Tell me, general: How long after you had me sign that treaty did you start plotting to have me killed?”

\--*--

“General Zod-” Came Swanwick’s voice, but Zod didn’t let him finish.

“Through _committing sacrilege_ against the memory of my people, no less. Against your government’s own laws as well, if I am not mistaken. Your country doesn’t even allow cloning of non-sentient beings, much less the theft of the genetic sequence of one of your own citizens for use in a bioweapon.”

“General-”

Zod was fairly sure he should be hearing roaring in his ears; instead, everything was strangely quiet. “You were even incompetent about it, unless you intended your creation to run rampant. Was Metropolis just the closest population center to the lab where your replica was being housed, or was your Project Doomsday made aware of my last confirmed location and was reacting to that knowledge?” He was definitely hearing screaming now, but it was again external. Was the replica truly that loud, or was he… attuned, like he had been to the sound of Kal’s agony?

Difficult to tell. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

This time, it was Ms. Lane who tried to get a word in edgewise. “General Zod, could you give the phone back to Superman, please?”

Zod glanced down at Kal, who hadn’t moved, not even his eyes, focused somewhere off in the distance. “Kal-El is unavailable at the moment.”

Ah, there was that edge in Ms. Lane’s voice again. “And what does that mean, exactly?”

Kal’s eyes flickered at that, and he beckoned for the phone with his good hand. Zod passed it to him, with some reluctance he did not want to name the reason behind. “It means I’ll talk to you later, Lois. …And you, general.” Kal’s tone made it obvious that Swanwick, at least, had nothing to look forward to, before Kal ended the call and set the ring to silent, squeezing his eyes shut as soon as he fumbled the phone into a pocket in his cape. Zod waited, as difficult as it was to stand still through the sound of the screaming.

He didn’t wait long. “That thing… it’s me. They took my DNA without my consent, and they cloned me, to make- _that_.” Kal shuddered.

“Your genes are not entirely your own,” said Zod, unable to remember if he had ever explained to Kal that he was the Codex—which might not even be relevant here; considering how compressed the coding of the Codex had to have been to be embedded Kal’s genetic structure, he did not know if human technology was even capable of extracting it—and unsure of how to best to explain the concept to someone largely unversed in Kryptonian technology.

Apparently his first attempt was poor, because Kal took it another way entirely and barked out a laugh. It looked as though it hurt. “That’s right. They stole the DNA of the heretic son of Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van, and they somehow managed to make something even _more_ blasphemous.”

“You’re sure he isn’t a person.”

"It's a mindless monster."

"You're _sure_."

Only then did Kal open his eyes, but even when they looked at Zod, they were glassy, and empty. “It might have been, once. But they never intended it to be, and now there is nothing.” Then Kal must have seen something in Zod’s face, because his gaze finally sharpened, and he looked pained. “I’m sorry.”

“It was your genetic material that was taken. You were the one who was violated.”

Kal barked another laugh. It had about as much joy in it as the last one. “I guess they wanted a more pliable version of me who would kill you like they wanted.” He tucked his knees up into his chest, folding inward onto himself. “They had me ferry you their promises they’d leave you alone even while they were figuring out how to create your murderer. From _me_. I was their tool all along; it was just so indirectly that I didn’t even notice.”

“They always wanted me dead; it does not surprise me that they have been planning how to achieve that end. I am an uncontrolled variable that has proven to be dangerous; to rely upon the treaty alone would have been foolish.”

Kal shot him a wary glance. “You sound… weirdly calm about this.”

Zod shrugged. “The replica cannot find you at even just a few kilometers’ distance; should I wish it, I could avoid him for eternity. He is no threat to me. As for his creators, they are reaping what they sowed.” A labor caste metaphor, perhaps, but an apt one. “They have stolen the essence of you, humanity’s greatest defender, and because they judged your morality unsuited to their purposes, they have discarded it, thereby ensuring the destruction of their nation’s own citizenry through their incompetence. I need do nothing but watch.”

“But I _can’t do that_ ,” Kal gasped in the direction of his knees, as if the pain of his injuries was only just now making itself known. “This isn’t my fault; this is the result of me being wronged. But already nearly a thousand innocent people have died, and that is also a wrong done to _them_. I have promised to protect them; I didn’t cause this mess, but if I’m the only one who can clean it up, I have to be the one to do it.”

Kal laboriously attempted to push himself to his feet, wavering in a crouch. He had nearly managed to straighten before Zod shoved him back into the dirt with a grip on his left shoulder, suddenly furious in a way he had never quite managed earlier, no matter how much the pressure had built behind his eyes. “ _You_ ,” Zod said, aware the word had come out a snarl, “Are _not_ a soldier. Your promises of protection are worthless. You are scientists' undereducated get without the bloodlines or the training to do so much as herd civilians away from war zones, much less defeat a being engineered, however clumsily, for battle. You have already proven yourself vastly inferior to this threat. You are incapable by virtue of your caste to bind yourself to fighting _anything_ , and by attempting to do so in this case, you will accomplish worse than nothing.”

Kal attempted to pull Zod’s hand from his shoulder with his good hand, to no avail; even if he had not been injured, both of them knew that Zod was stronger. But he still tried, growing paler and more wane in the attempt, glaring up at Zod with increasing, impotent rage that barely overshadowed his exhaustion and pain. “Let _go_.”

Zod did not. “You cannot be this stupid. If you face the replica again, _you will die_.”

Kal completely failed to look swayed by this argument. “If I don’t, _everyone_ will die.”

No matter how he searched for it, his earlier, easy calm had evaporated into nothing; Zod’s hand tightened on Kal’s shoulder without his conscious input. _Why should I care?_ This was his first thought. He did not vocalize it.

He did not fear upsetting Kal. Even if Kal were ever worth fearing, it would be difficult to make him angrier than he already was. It was just he was not sure it was Kal he would be asking that particular question, and… this was foolishness. He had overlooked the obvious. Had it even _occurred_ to Kal to think of “How are you going to kill your replica?”

Of course, it was _that_ , of all things, that caused Kal to falter. “I…”

“He regenerates quickly, you said. Stronger than you, likely faster as well. Did he fly or use heat vision at any point?”

Kal shook his head slowly.

“That’s one advantage you have. Theoretically, you could attempt to overwhelm his regenerative abilities. You could just stay out of reach and try to burn him to ashes, but it sounds as if he is at least marginally more durable than a normal Kryptonian,” whatever _that_ was, anymore; a population of three couldn’t yield much in the way of consistency across subjects, “So by the time he would theoretically be dead, he probably will have healed- what is it?”

Kal had not, at any point, actually stopped shaking his head. “I just can't believe- how could they do this to me? Is that what they wanted from me all along?” His left hand clenched in the dirt, “A mindless _puppet_? They didn't even get it right; they just have a rabid animal that they need me to put down.”

“Considering you fought him for at best a few minutes, I wonder that you are so sure. Is that surety because you _believe_ it, or because you are trying to convince yourself because you cannot afford to expend the time or effort to figure out the truth?”

Kal stared at him. “First you start strategizing for how to kill it, now you’re trying to convince me there’s a chance it's a person. _Do you want me to kill it or not_?”

“You’ve already made it clear that my opinion on this matter is irrelevant to you. The fact is, by your own ethics, you are obliged to stop him whether or not he is a person. By your own ability, however, it is a moot point, because you almost certainly _cannot_ stop him.”

The screaming started again, but both he and Kal ignored it, staring at each other. Kal coughed once. “Maybe I can reason with it. Then it being a person wouldn’t be moot at all.”

Zod mentally ran through a list of the now dozens of enemies Kal had fought over the past year. “And how many times has that worked for you.”

Kal shot him a slightly twisted grin. “It worked on _you_ -“ More screaming cut Kal off, mostly because both of them noticed simultaneously that the sound was more distant. Which meant- “Shit,” said Kal, and this time Zod let him scramble to his feet, though he didn’t release his grip on Kal’s shoulder, “It’s headed back towards Metropolis!”

He made as if to fly off, but Zod pulled him back. Kal stared at him, wild-eyed. “Let _go_ -!”

“ _You_ are returning to Smallville. Ask your mother where she stored the green metal that nearly killed you; she likely buried it somewhere, with any sense in a lead box. Carry it back here. It may be the only thing that can stop your replica. Which likely would have occurred to you if you weren’t concussed and panicked,” Zod said pointedly.

Kal relented, seeing the logic of his plan, but the wildness didn’t fade from his eyes. “It’ll get to Metropolis long before I can get back from Smallville. I can’t- I can’t…”

Zod had decided a long time ago that caring about someone outside the military caste was a mistake. In the military caste, everyone had been born to fulfill the same purpose: to protect Krypton. When disagreements arose on how to accomplish that goal, they were easily dealt with by the fact that the entire military caste fell within the same hierarchy; while a subordinate could privately air concerns with a superior, in the end, a subordinate always followed their superior’s lead.

According to Jor-El, disagreements were dealt with differently in the science caste, but the point remained that when one sought companionship outside one’s caste, you ended up having to contend with an unknown set of variables. If Jor-El had been military caste, he wouldn’t have embarked on his short-sighted, selfish plan to save the Codex in the first place; what was the point of preserving the genetic information of all of Krypton if it would never be used? Why privilege the continued existence of a newborn, heretic child over every other Kryptonian in existence?

If Jor-El had been military caste, he would have listened when Zod told him to stop.

If Jor-El had been military, he would have told Zod why any attempt to salvage Krypton was futile effort, and they would have worked out a plan that saved more than Jor’s son. Zod and his staff had managed to survive incidentally; Zod had often wondered how many lives they could have preserved had they utilized the Phantom Zone Projector more deliberately.

If Jor had been-

If Jor had just _trusted_ him-

But he hadn’t, and sometimes that burned more than all of Zod’s other failures combined, that to this day he could not figure out where he had gone wrong. How had he failed so badly that a friendship that had endured decades, ascensions, and accidental poisonings on _three_ separate occasions, by Rao's light, couldn’t even withstand the weight of a little bit of faith?

But that went both ways, didn’t it. Zod hadn’t told Jor what he was planning either, until the very end when it was too late to change much of anything. Both of them had noticed Krypton’s degradation, and it hadn’t occurred to either of them to confer… or that the other would not stand idly by as their home world consumed itself. On Zod’s part, it hadn’t been a conscious decision; of course Jor wouldn’t be involved in a coup. It wasn’t even that Zod had thought Jor would try to stop him; Jor was a patriot, but in the same way Zod was. Their allegiance was to the people of Krypton, not to the Council. Had a coup been able to reverse the damage in time after the Council had rebuffed time and again any attempts at ceasing the mining that had reduced Krypton to a lifeless husk, Jor would have joined such an uprising in a second. It was just that science caste had no place in a military action, no matter if the science caste member in question had played at sparring in the past or not, and Zod hadn’t seen the point of informing Jor until there came a point that Jor’s expertise was needed. Zod had intended to put all the resources of Krypton at Jor’s disposal the moment he took power, of course—the science caste’s acumen was necessary for Zod’s plan to succeed at all—but by that point it had been too late, and Jor had been forced to work with the resources he had, which was basically nothing.

It was amazing how much all of that now sounded like pathetic justifications. They had once spent an hour complaining to each other about a switch in the brand of the tea ration to one they both thought tasted too floral. An _hour_. Zod didn’t even like tea that much. Whether something was _relevant_ or not never figured into any of his discussions with Jor. And he couldn’t have spared five minutes to tell Jor he was planning a revolution?

The only reason for that could be that Zod hadn’t trusted Jor not to oppose him. Jor hadn’t been military, hadn’t been familiar in the way Faora and the rest of his staff had been. Zod had known Jor over half his life, and yet he had little more insight into Jor’s thought patterns after twenty years than he’d had after two months. Jor wasn’t military, and thus was the other, unpredictable.

Jor hadn’t been someone Zod could order to stand down and know he would be obeyed.

And so they had worked at cross-purposes, both thinking the other had nothing to offer at best, would actively impede them at worst (and they had both been right in the end, a self-fulfilling prophecy).

It was almost funny. There had not been a close friendship between the leaders of the military and science castes in centuries, at least since the exploration program had been canceled, and at the most critical juncture in Krypton’s history, the point at which an alignment of the two castes’ efforts literally could have saved their entire species, if not their world… they had said nothing to each other as Krypton collapsed around them. They should have been their people’s saviors, but Jor had barely managed to save one—one! Out of billions!—and Zod… he’d murdered his best friend, for nothing.

And there had been nothing left; not even his memories, really. Zod had actually needed to stop himself from startling when Jor’s AI had first projected itself to him; he’d half-forgotten what Jor had looked like.

Nothing left except for Kal, who was so much like his father except in all the ways he was not. Jor would have, perhaps, had more sense than Kal, knowing the need to weigh the lives of the many against the few, even as he mourned them. Perhaps. But Jor also would never have stared at him like that; no matter his own failures to come up with a solution, Jor had never looked to Zod, desperate for an answer to a problem he could not solve alone.

Zod had decided a long time ago that caring about someone outside the military caste was a mistake. And so the only logical conclusion to be drawn in the end was that he was an even bigger idiot than he’d originally thought, because the next thing that came out of his mouth was, “I’ll stall him until your return.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Knowing how a story will end doesn't do as much to help you get there as you would think. My goal is to post the last chapter before _Batman v. Superman_ comes out; not that this isn't a canon divergence already, but I've been working with the _Justice League_ and _Young Justice_ cartoon versions of all the characters that weren't actually present in _Man of Steel_ in mind, so I'm hoping to finish before my versions of Sirs-Referenced-but-not-Actually-Appearing-in-this-Story get completely Jossed.


	8. Chapter 8

That was how he found himself thirty seconds later landing as obviously as possible about fifty meters ahead of the replica, still wondering at his poor life choices. Metropolis was a good kilometer and a half behind them, so no fear of collateral damage in that respect, but he was more caught up at the sight of the being he had come to… do something about, for lack of any actual plan.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true; he had a plan. It was just a bad one, rapidly assessed to be even worse than originally supposed after he got a few seconds of looking over his target. He was much as both the red-haired reporter and Kal had described him: nearly four meters tall, broad-shouldered, gray skinned (though to Zod it looked more rock than scaled), red eyes. But the eyes weren’t just red; they were _glowing_ , the exact same shade of Kal’s when he was on the verge of using his heat vision.

There was nothing of the House of El about the replica’s face. There was nothing _Kryptonian_ about him at all, in truth, except for the eyes. The eyes of a Kryptonian on Earth overcome by fury.

Zod could understand the sentiment.

It actually took the replica a few seconds to notice him, and it took effort to keep his posture relaxed and open as the replica raked his eyes over him. The replica didn’t move immediately, so Zod dared to say, “Do you know who I am?”

The replica studied him for a second longer, then his eyes narrowed. “ _Kryptonian_.”

The brief, treacherous flair of hope that was shot through Zod by the fact that the replica had _spoken_ —that Kal had been _wrong_ ; no mere animal could talk—nearly killed him. Specifically, the fact that he dared to blink. It was only the feeling of air displacement caused by the replica’s attack and decades of training that sent him dodging the hand aimed for his throat.

And the kick aimed at his ribcage that followed. And the punch that whistled past his left ear, after which the replica was slightly overextended and Zod was able to slam the heel of his palm into the space the replica’s nose should have been and flew a few hundred meters straight up while the replica was momentarily stunned.

It had been an extremely informative second of combat, all things considered.

Point one: Made obvious by the fact that he could already feel something twinging in his back, he was exceedingly out of practice, which made sense when he considered that he was undergoing his first real battle in over a year. (In no way did sparring with Kal count. At all.) He half-expected to hear Faora laughing at him.

Point two: The replica had no combat training whatsoever. His attacks were sloppy, and his defense was nonexistent. Kal was better.

Point three: Point two mattered less when the replica not only visibly faster, stronger, and more durable than either himself or Kal, but also clearly had no issue with hurting people. Quite the opposite, in fact. Overwhelming physical might and killing instinct did a lot to compensate for lack of skill.

Question arising from point three: It was not so much of a power discrepancy that it made sense for Kal to have been beaten so soundly, so quickly. What had gone wrong?

Immediate answer: Kal had blocked, because (1) he did not know how to dodge, and (2) it never would have occurred to him it was necessary to do so. Zod was stronger than Kal, but not by so much that blocking wasn’t a viable strategy. Kal had never fought anyone before where to take any kind of blow, no matter how well deflected, was to guarantee an injury. And Kal operated as a protector; not only had dodging before been a wholly unnecessary skill, it was often a poor instinct to have when whatever was behind you was more fragile than you were. So Kal had not wanted to learn, and Zod had not felt it terribly necessary to teach him.

Conclusion arising from point three: This was one of the poorest possible matchups for Kal.

Less so for him.

He had not been ill-built for a member of the military caste, but he had not been particularly tall or strong, either. He’d had more than one soldier on his staff who would have been able to crush his wrist just by squeezing slightly. The replica was not—regenerative abilities notwithstanding—any more impressive than some of the more outstanding results of the short-lived, so-called ‘Chimera’ line.

It was very reminiscent of sparring with Nam-Ek, in fact, except that for all the fact that Nam-Ek had tended to over-rely on his superior reach and strength, he had still been trained. A person, for all that his genetic code had been more severely altered than the average member of the military caste. Loyal.

Nam-Ek had never tried to kill him.

Nor had he ever tried to kill Nam-Ek, for all that he had succeeded in doing so anyway.

So it was more like fighting a Nam-Ek driven mad, and Zod was being forced to put him down.

With the bodies of their comrades lying unmoving at their feet-

This was not helping.

It was surprisingly difficult to come up with a coherent strategy when horror started to crawl up Zod’s spine whenever he let his mind linger on what he was fighting for more than a few seconds.

Mental Reset: He was not trying to kill the replica. He was attempting to stall him until Kal returned. Temporarily set aside the fact that the plan eventually led to the replica’s death; he had to survive the first phase of the plan before he could worry about that.

Point one-A: The replica had not attacked him in nearly half a minute, because

Point one-B: The replica did not even seem to know where he had gone.

Tentative Conclusion: Wait him out.

Except this was not a viable strategy, as the replica already looked as if he were growing frustrated. He had stopped looking around for Zod and had turned his gaze back towards Metropolis.

Conclusion: The replica’s attention span for fruitless searching had grown too short for a waiting game to prove viable.

Which was why Zod landed behind the replica two seconds later and clapped his hands once to get his attention, then found himself immediately slamming an elbow into the replica’s solar plexus when the replica closed too quickly for him to do anything else. This did not visibly hurt the replica, but it gave Zod the space to follow up with a right upper cut to the replica’s jaw. Which also visibly did nothing except make the replica stagger back one step and make Zod hiss at the sharp spike of pain that radiated through his hand. It was like punching a wall back when punching a wall actually still had the capacity to injure him. He nearly forgot himself long enough to attempt to block when the replica recovered and tried to slap him in the side of the head, his duck so belated that the replica’s hand grazed the top of his skull. It was a glancing blow at best, yet it still knocked Zod off his feet, and Zod was only prevented from landing badly on his shoulder by the fact that his body remembered better than he did that he could now fly.

The problem with this was that the replica was not stunned this time when Zod attempted to get some distance in the air to give him a few seconds to get over the ringing in his ears, and while the replica had given no sign that _he_ knew how to fly, he could still _jump_ , and he came less than a hair’s breadth from a successful grab at Zod’s right foot before Zod shoved off the replica’s face with his left, gaining himself another few meters in altitude while sending the replica crashing back to the ground.

Zod gave himself a full second’s respite to take a deep breath and will his hands to stop shaking—because there was nothing his body liked to do more on this planet than betray him—before he shouted, “Follow me, if you can!” And sped off as fast as he could directly away from Metropolis.

Well, not strictly speaking as fast as he could—it would have been faster out of the atmosphere where there was no wind resistance—but the replica’s mastery of his senses appeared even more pathetic than his own, and what was the point of this if he couldn’t even be effective bait?

He might not have made it out of the atmosphere anyway, as he had been one-hundred percent correct in his initial assessment of their speed differential; even on the ground, the replica was faster than him, and it was much more difficult to track the replica’s movements when the replica wasn’t within his direct line of sight. It was the sound and feel of air displacement again that alerted Zod to the replica’s approach; this time, Zod just let himself drop, smiling despite himself as the replica’s second attempted grab just barely skimmed his back as Zod fell past him and the replica went over his head. If he could remember his training for once and get outside his own head long enough to live in the moment, this was almost enjoyable-

When he regained consciousness a few seconds later, through the greying at the edges of his vision and the taste of dirt and blood in his mouth, he muzzily remembered that there was at least one other thing that distinguished this fight from his spars with Nam-Ek: He had never fought Nam-Ek while wearing a sweater, either. Sweaters had gone out of fashion on Krypton within a few years of the invention of temperature controlled bodysuits, and Zod had only ever seen them in historical exhibits in museums before coming to Earth. They had never been _in_ fashion for the military caste, for the very good reason that their loose fit meant they provided convenient handholds for enemies. Like how the replica had grabbed the back of his just now and slammed him face-first into the ground from sixty meters in the air.

He hadn’t even gotten to his knees when the sight of the replica loomed directly in front of him, reaching for his face, which was how Zod discovered that heat vision—among its various other, often inconvenient uses—also acted as a panic response. A stupid panic response, because it _still_ took a few seconds for his sight to clear up, but this time he pushed off backwards and didn’t stop moving until he stopped seeing sparks on the periphery. No need to make it easier for the replica to crush his skull after all. However, the replica, miracle of miracles, had not yet finished pushing himself to his feet despite the fact that the burn on his chest had already finished healing over, so Zod took the brief respite to say, “We don’t have to do this.”

The replica just stared at him. He didn’t attack immediately, however, so Zod tried again. “We shouldn’t be enemies. We are _both_ Kryptonian. The humans, they are using you-”

This time, the replica aimed directly for his eyes. Even as he deflected with a strike from the heel of his palm and weaved out of the way, even through the blood and dirt in his mouth, Zod tasted bile. The replica could learn—the redirection in its focus proved that much—but it showed no sign of comprehension. The United States military had gotten exactly what it thought it wanted, then; all of Kal’s strength and fury, none of his restraint. Or sanity.

Zod had been a fool to hope otherwise. If he felt something crack in his right hand when he punched the replica in the chin for the second time, the feeling didn’t even penetrate through the cloud that had fallen over his consciousness. Nothing did, in fact, for the next several minutes—the battle serenity he had been seeking coming over him at last, focused on nothing but _evade_ , _distract_ , _keep it away from the civilian populace_ —until he heard a shout from above him. “Zod!”

Zod jabbed the replica in the throat and kneed it in the face when it hunched over before pushing back to get some space and daring to glance up. Kal from the air looked down at him, a small box gripped in his left hand, his right arm still dangling uselessly by his side.

\--*--

In the end, it proved fairly anticlimactic. At some point, Zod’s calm had descended into static, and he couldn’t even think well enough to try and figure out how to coordinate an attack with Kal, much less determine how to convince Kal of the necessity should Kal still prove reticent. The thought of Kal being forced to finally reject his own moral code also made something churn unpleasantly in Zod’s stomach, so it finally came down to Zod wordlessly taking the box from Kal before punching the replica in the throat again with his right hand with enough force to make it gasp before slamming the box with his left into the back of the replica’s throat hard enough to reduce the box to dust.

He was not wearing gloves, and the punch finished crushing what bones in his right hand had still been mostly intact, so the space between the lead box’s disintegration and his left arm being shoved into a stream up to his shoulder was mostly a blur.

He could have only wished for the vomiting to be as vague in his memory, but no such luck. His vision still wasn’t entirely focusing by the time he finished, but it was good enough to see Kal’s pained, uncertain smile. He looked almost as gray as Zod felt, as best as could be determined in the rapidly approaching twilight. “You okay?”

Zod rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes. The static hadn’t entirely waned, only overlaid occasionally by pulses of nausea (fortunately fading) and pain from his right hand (unfortunately not). “No.”

Kal shifted a little bit in his seat on the ground to Zod’s left. “Me neither.” He stopped. Breathed in unsteadily. “It’s dead.”

Rarely had a victory been heralded with such grief. What victory it was. “You couldn’t have reasoned with it. I tried. It didn’t understand.”

“I…” Another deep breath, no more regular than the first. “I’m so sorry.”

“So am I.”

“I’ll burn the body.” Then Kal waited, as if expecting censure.

“Probably for the best.” It was actually the traditional way to dispose of the dead on Krypton, but it wasn’t as if that particularly mattered here. Besides, there were more important factors to consider. “Wouldn’t want to leave General Swanwick a corpse to experiment with further.”

With such a small distance between them, even Zod could hear it when Kal’s heartrate jumped. “Are you… what are you going to do?”

Zod cracked an eye open. Beside him, Kal had gone tense enough that Zod could actually see him shaking, though some of that might have been exhaustion. “The treaty was violated.”

“Yeah.”

It didn’t actually take effort to sit up. His body was not weary, merely his mind. He just didn’t want to think anymore, but that was not a luxury he could afford. “We cannot allow the United States military to continue with their experiments. And I cannot forgive them for what they have done. But… I’m beyond forcing you to fight me, Kal. I never want to fight another Kryptonian again.” His vision flickered, his own form of exhaustion making itself known. “Least of all you.”

Physical affection was not unknown on Krypton, just usually reserved for the very young. Zod had known Faora since they were children, yet he had not felt comfortable doing more than laying a hand on her shoulder even as she grieved the remains of their home world. Still, humans were different, and Kal had been raised human, so as Kal’s face crumpled and his shoulders began to hitch, when he reached over with his good arm and wrapped it around Zod’s neck while burying his face in Zod’s shoulder, while Zod couldn’t even begin to figure out how to reciprocate the hug, he only felt mildly awkward running his fingers through Kal’s hair and humming softly, as he had done once upon a time for more than one first-year cadet homesick for the familiarity of their crèche. Even for members of the military caste, there was something terrible about the loss of innocence, and the fact that it had come to Kal so late made it no less a tragedy. Trust foolishly misplaced made it no less gone forever when it was broken.

\--*--

For all they were in the middle of a field and badly exposed, they might have fallen asleep there—Zod’s instincts were definitely shot enough for that—had Kal’s phone not begun to vibrate. Kal startled away from Zod’s shoulder where he had been dozing and fumbled his phone out of the pocket in his cape badly enough that he nearly dropped it, tapping at the answer button three times below _Lois Lane_ before it finally registered. He was at least considerate enough to put it on speaker before he said, “Hello?”

“Oh thank god, you’re alive.”

Kal put the phone on the ground between them and scrubbed at his eyes with the palm of his hand. “More or less.” His voice sharpened. “You can tell the general that it’s dead, by the way.”

“Tell him yourself.” There was a sound of a button being pressed. “Speaker.” The artificial cheerfulness entered Ms. Lane’s voice again. “Now we can conference!”

“Great minds,” Kal mouthed at Zod before turning back to the phone. “General, it’s dead. You’re welcome.” If Zod had ever heard Kal so venomous, he couldn’t recall it.

General Swanwick was smart enough not to address the sarcasm. “Thank you.” There was a pause. “You sound… well.”

“I’ll survive.”

Another pause. “Is General Zod with you?”

“He’ll survive too. Sorry to disappoint you.”

With the number of pauses General Swanwick was taking between his thoughts, it was becoming clear he hadn’t expected to be having this conversation at all. “The United States government owes both you and General Zod an apology.”

“No shit,” Kal actually _snarled_ into the phone.

Another pause. It was likely that General Swanwick was even more surprised than Zod himself at Kal’s lapse in temper, so it was upon Ms. Lane to say lightly, “I didn’t know it was legal for Superman to swear.”

Kal sighed, at least some of his anger deflating. “It’s been a long day, Lois. My PG rating rises to R after nightfall.” He took a breath and let it out. This time when he spoke, his tone came out much more even. “General Swanwick.”

“Yes, Superman?”

“You stole my DNA. You broke your treaty with Zod, even if you planned it originally for later.”

“Yes.” Even through the phone, Zod could hear General Swanwick swallow. “I am willing to take full responsibility-”

“As noble as it is, general,” Zod interrupted, “For you to sacrifice yourself for your country, we both know that you could not have done any of this without authorization from your superiors.” He let the implications of both his presence in the conversation and his words sink in for a long moment before he said, “I have no plans to seek retribution on you or anyone else at this time. However, that is contingent on you paying proper restitution to Kal-El for how you have violated his bodily autonomy. That entails you not only turning over all of the results of your research to him, but also destroying all of your samples and copies of your research immediately.” He got out his own phone and started tapping over to Google Maps to give time to let General Swanwick think about that before continuing, “You will give Ms. Lane access to all of your records and the ability to verify your actions. You will come alone to the following location to turn over the research results to Kal-El.” He rattled off a series of coordinates in a rural area about fifty kilometers outside of Metropolis. “You have two hours.”

There was a stunned pause. “ _Two hours_ -?” “Can I come?” Ms. Lane interrupted.

Zod looked at Kal, who shrugged. “Sure, Lois. But no recording or listening devices, okay? Just your notepad. And that goes for you too, general. If I see another satellite or hear a wire… I actually can’t think of a threat right now that would scare you enough to listen to me, but Zod is dealing with this as politely as he is right now as a courtesy to me. Please don’t push it.”

General Swanwick breathed noisily through his nose. “There are- may I bring a few other people? Some of the research results are quite… delicate and require some explaining. There will be no recording or listening devices, but I really _can’t_ turn over all the research results unless I can bring at least two more people with me.”

Kal looked at Zod, who also couldn’t think of anything to do but shrug. There was probably some trick in there, but while he had already known it was a risk to ask for the research when both he and Kal were still injured and exhausted, it was an even bigger risk to let to United States government have it for longer than necessary. Finally, Kal just said, “Fine. Two hours,” and hung up.

\--*--

Burning the replica’s body didn’t take long; it was already dissolving when he and Kal returned to it and had completely lost its regenerative capabilities, though Zod didn’t know whether to worry about this being another property of the radioactive green metal or a reaction unique to the replica. Of the green metal itself, there was no sign, either completely absorbed by the replica or ground down and dispersed so widely that neither he nor Kal could still feel its effects. A lost trump card should more replicas surface in the future, but Zod couldn’t find the space within himself at the moment to regret the loss.

After that, they returned to the Fortress, where Zod had the unpleasant duty of forcing himself to look at both of their skeletal structures before setting all of the broken bones in his right hand while Kal held his wrist down on the table, setting Kal’s right forearm one-handed while Kal braced his own broken elbow, and jury rigging casts for both of them out of synthesized ship parts. Kal briefly insisted on at least setting Zod’s hand for him before Zod asked him exactly how much medical training he had undergone, which turned out to be none. Zod’s basic field medic training wasn’t ideal, but he had at least set bones before.

However, _before_ had always been with the benefit of painkillers. There were some coded into the replicator, but they all proved ineffective against their enhanced immune systems, whether ingested or topical (the injected anesthetics, of course, were not even worth trying). Zod therefore got to learn that setting a hand was no less painful than breaking it all over again; more so, in fact, without adrenaline to dull the pain and danger to distract him. Kal didn’t look any better after his own breaks were tended to, a sling holding his right arm close to his chest and a (likely ineffectual) ice pack taped to his face, for all his injuries did nothing to suppress his appetite. “How do we even know that they’ll actually turn over all the research and not hold onto any of it?” he asked around a mouthful of meat pie.

Zod was managing to keep down a few mouthfuls of butternut squash, but he wasn’t willing to risk any more. He had been lucky in that no shards of the green metal had imbedded themselves in him when he had broken the lead box, but still his stomach failed to completely settle. The pain in his hand didn’t help. “We don’t. But I imagine you and Ms. Lane will do your best to continue monitoring the situation, so it at least will be more difficult for them. Also, if they truly began Project Doomsday because they feared me killing you and rampaging across the planet, this should assuage their fears and dissuade moderate factions in the government from trying again.”

“You don’t sound very hopeful.”

“I’m not. I think they’re nearly as worried about you as about me, and now they have confirmation that we are willing to work together. The optimists might say that you’re holding me in check, but in my experience, pessimists tend to be the ones in charge of security, and they’re going to ask what happens when I manage to turn you against humanity.”

Even with a mouthful of pie puffing out his cheeks, Kal still managed to look indignant. “All they’ve done is managed to convince me to never trust the U.S. government again.”

Zod shrugged. “On a world that still defines itself based on geographic borders, I doubt a government will distinguish much between being their enemy and being an enemy of their species.”

That just got Kal more incensed. “If I was _actually_ their enemy, wouldn’t they know it? What with the heat vision and the ability to tear apart buildings and… everything?”

“Institutions are built simultaneously on paranoia and arrogance. Also, I am the last person who should be attempting to explain human thought processes to you.”

Kal chuckled a little bit. “That’s true.” Then he looked more closely at Zod’s face and frowned. “You know… you don’t have to come.” Zod stared at him, making Kal shift a bit but not look away. “I mean, you’re tired and hurt and angry-”

“All of which also applies to you,” Zod pointed out.

Kal didn’t bother disputing this. “Yeah, but I’m just feeling personally violated and complicit in the execution of my clone-”

“Is that all.”

“It’s not _nothing_ ; I know it’s a lot. It’s probably gonna keep me up at night for a while. But you… you look like you just had to watch your friends die all over again, except this time you had to kill them because they’d gone crazy and I was too weak to do it myself. You shouldn’t have to face the man who orchestrated that.”

Most of the time, Zod privately thought of Kal as well-meaning, but not wise. Occasionally he was reminded that Kal was far more insightful about other people than his father had ever managed to be, and it was usually terrible. “Their deaths were my fault the first time. And considering I am only alive because of your hesitation to kill, I don’t think I’m the person to talk to about how you’re weak because you seek other alternatives before taking the easiest path."

Kal looked thoughtful. “You know, I always thought you thought I was sort of pathetic for trying to fight without killing.”

“Military caste were also police force,” Zod reminded him. “And Krypton didn’t have a death sentence.” If it had, Zod would have died on Krypton, since he and his staff would have been executed for treason instead of being sent to the Phantom Zone. “Even military caste only had dispensation to kill during war or in self-defense.” But the impulse had still been there, violence as first resort. Unnecessary aggression had been a frequent cause for reconditioning back on Krpyton, and Zod had proven no less prone to it, in the end.

He had served a tour of service as law enforcement, just to try it out, and he had not done poorly at it. But the career tracks had been different, and even on Krypton it had been known that soldiers were not always the best operators in civilian centers. Their instincts weren't wired correctly for it, too prone to attack when they were meant to defend.

Kal would have been a terrible soldier. But he was not trying to be a soldier, was he. “Being naïve doesn’t always mean you’re wrong.”

\--*--

The second they left the radius of the cloaking device to head over to their chosen rendezvous, Kal’s phone dinged to alert him he had a message, _Lois Lane_ figuring prominently on the screen.

Zod looked at Kal. “Does anyone else even have this number?”

“My mom. One second.” He picked up the phone and tapped over to the voicemail.

Immediately, Ms. Lane’s voice came through audibly even without speaker, and while she didn’t sound frightened, the sheer amount of poorly-concealed strain in her voice was still enough to be alarming. “Holy shit, K- Superman. Pick up pick up pick up- _damn it_. Okay,” a deep breath. “… Okay. Don’t panic.” She didn’t sound like she knew whether she was talking to Kal or herself. “This is not an emergency or bad news. Probably. I’m in a closet right now because Swanwick didn’t want me to call you without him there, but right now fuck him. This is _really_ not news to convey over the phone, so I’m not going to since we’re going to see each other in forty minutes, but when they said they were going to turn over the research results to you, they actually got _results_ , okay? Beyond Project Doomsday. So just, when they bring them out, don’t freak out, okay? Don’t let them see you flinch. The fuckers don’t deserve to see Superman flinch. Right. Okay. I’ve gotta go.”

Zod watched Kal stare at his phone before ordering, “Don’t call her back.” Kal looked at him uncomprehendingly. “Kal. They’re already on their way. She won’t be able to say anything. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes-”

In his hand, Kal’s phone’s screen cracked. “Five.”

“… Five is fine.”

Kal spent the ten minutes spare they had upon arrival looking around with his eyes focused on things Zod couldn’t see. Zod, for his part, couldn’t hear any of the high-pitched whining he usually associated with electronics except for the sounds coming from their phones, so he just stood in parade rest and tried to calm his breathing.

It didn’t really work.

The military truck arrived exactly on time, which did absolutely nothing to calm either him or Kal. Almost immediately at the sight of it, his vision flickered, and he got a very clear view of the fact that there were in fact four people in the truck, two in front, two in back, with one of the people in the truck bed significantly smaller than the others. That was all he got before his vision righted itself again, and he was still blinking back sparks as General Swanwick stepped down from the driver’s seat and Ms. Lane stepped down from the seat next to him. Zod could see her shaking her head, heard her whisper, “I’m so sorry,” but Kal didn’t seem to notice.

“Superman?” General Swanwick sounded unsure, and Zod was abruptly reminded that even with what he now considered his ‘normal’ vision, he could still see significantly better in the dark than humans.

In response, Kal stepped forward, though not directly into the light of the truck’s high-beams. “I’m here, general.”

“Ah. Is General Zod with you?”

“Yes.” Kal’s voice was tight. “Now please give me what you have and go.”

The voice coming from the back of the truck was so faint that General Swanwick and Ms. Lane didn’t even seem to notice it, but both his and Kal turned to look as they heard a high, childish voice say, “Is that Superman?”

“Sweetie,” came another voice, this one older and more feminine, “You’ve got to wait until the general says it’s alright for you to come out.”

“But I-”

“Bring him out.” General Swanwick’s voice was raised only slightly, yet it apparently carried cleanly enough that the other two voices quieted immediately, and Zod could hear the crunching of gravel beneath their feet as they stepped out of the back of the truck and into their line of sight.

The woman was a human; slightly younger than Kal’s mother, perhaps. Irrelevant.

The boy… the boy, if Zod had to guess at his age, would have been either a sixth- or seventh-year cadet, just a couple of years before adolescence. Thick black hair. Blue eyes. Indistinguishable, in most ways, from a human child, had his heartbeat not been slightly too slow, and had he not picked Kal immediately out of the darkness. “Are you really Superman?”

Kal looked down at him. Swallowed. Nodded.

The boy looked back at him. And grinned. And his smile was Kal-El’s, and Jor-El’s before him. “Hi! I’m Superboy!”

Ms. Lane, did not, in the end, get her wish. Kal very definitely flinched, even if Zod and the boy were the only ones to see it. Even if Zod was too preoccupied to care, distracted from Kal’s distress by the boy standing not ten meters away; a dream of a dead world, resurrected from ashes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow I started posting this right after law school started and finished it right before law school ended, so that happened. Not 100% happy with the ending, but I can only stare at it for so long, so. Here it is.


End file.
